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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years

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Anonymous asked: Like many from across the pond in the USA I have been astonished at the amazing story of Captain Tom Moore who at the age of 99 years old walked back and forth across his garden to raise a fantastic amount of money for your national health service (NHS) and into the hearts of your nation. It’s the kind of eccentricity we love about the British. The British media referred to him as Captain Tom Moore so as a former army veteran yourself I wanted to know do you get to use your officer rank after you retire from the British Army? Did you keep your rank after you did your time?

For those who don’t know who Captain Tom Moore is let me briefly recap. On 6 April 2020, at the age of 99, Captain Tom Moore - an army veteran of the Second World War - began to walk around his garden in aid of NHS Charities Together during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the goal of raising £1,000 by his 100th birthday. By 26 April he had raised over £29 million. He quickly became a popular household name in the United Kingdom generating much interest in his life story, and earned a number of accolades. After the his amazing feat, he featured in a cover version of the song “You’ll Never Walk Alone” with proceeds going to the same charity. The song topped the UK music charts and made him the oldest person to ever achieve a UK number one. At present there are plans to celebrate his 100th birthday with the honour of a RAF flypast and a postmark. There is also public pressure for the Queen to knight him - a worthy honour indeed.

I would use many superlatives to describe what Captain Tom Moore’s did - heroic, marvellous, and bloody brilliant comes to mind - but one thing I would never call what he did is eccentric. There is nothing eccentric in his outstanding example. Rather I think it typifies the British character to a tee. I think the way the British people have responded to Captain Tom Moore’s heroic example is partly indicative of how the British still like to see themselves in a time of acute crisis. His example rightly inspires many and reminds us of who we are too. Forgive me but my intent is not to sound too jingoistic because I’m also broadly impressed with how the French have responded to this crisis (since I live in Paris) with being good and helpful neighbours and showing grace and easy humour; indeed every night at 8pm sharp we residents all over France faithfully clap from our open windows and balconies in support of front line workers. The French, like the wonderful singing Italians and the other Europeans, have their own strength of character to get through this awful pandemic.

Perhaps it may sound corny to some but to me it gives me faith that even as Britain has gone through a bitter fight over Brexit and our uncertain place in the world I know that when disaster strikes us all with our backs are against the wall we come together. We don’t panic. We just get on with it with little fuss. Keep calm and carry on is more than a meme. If you don’t believe me Captain Tom Moore’s example is one of many people from all walks of life doing what they can to raise money for charity. There are so many people who have taken the creative initiative to do what they can to raise money for the work of our amazing front line workers (doctors and nurses and support staff). Some are doing online challenges - push ups or squats for charity. I know of many veterans who have responded to the call to come back and support the NHS. My eldest brother, a veteran, has been a volunteering with Team Rubicon UK, a military veteran charity, who are now helping to co-ordinate other veteran volunteers to use their skills to support hospitals in the logistics of delivery of medical and food supplies. There are so many mini-Captain Tom Moore’s out there. It’s heart warming.

And so to your question.

Do British military veterans keep their rank after they leave or retire? It’s complicated. There’s no legal reason why they can’t, but the more junior the officer rank, the more gauche and pretentious doing so it is perceived as.

In the old days - according to my grandfather who was a very senior officer in the army - customs were dictated by social class. A commissioned officer such as Lieutenant was considered to be a Gentleman and therefore allowed to use two titles: either ‘Mister’ or ‘Lieutenant’. The rank of Gentleman is considered to be socially superior and so Subalterns (2nd and 1st Lieutenants) were generally referred to as Mr Smith, rather than Lt Smith, even when they are still serving. Once they left the Army these junior officers would drop their socially inferior rank and go with being addressed as ‘Mister’. If an officer became a Captain then he was considered equal in rank to an Esquire and so a Captain was never addressed as ‘Mister’. But using the title Captain after leaving the army was also seen as gauche and so many didn’t - unless others showed them that due deference rather than they insisting upon it.

When we get to the more senior ranks the customs change. Senior field officers like a Major or Colonel were allowed to use their rank after they retired. You quite often found a Maj (Ret’d) Smith, for example, working for a military charity or writing angry letters to the Daily Telegraph or the Times or even more popularly turning up in a Agatha Christie drawing room murder mystery.

When an officer becomes a General officer - from Brigadier (one star general) onwards to Field Marshal - they retain their rank in retirement from the army because they really have earned it.

So all this old school but I think the the rule of thumb used today is that anyone using their rank below the rank of Major is considered bad form.

These days almost no ex-officer retires from the world of work. No one really gives up work and becomes a pensioner, pottering about in the garden or playing golf. Many of course move into a second career, where it simply is not the custom to be addressed by your rank in your new civilian place of work. I suppose an exception might be the private security and defence industry where rank is a signifier of experience and professional competence.

I know I have never used my officer rank in my civilian life as I don’t think it’s socially appropriate nor advantageous to do so in my line of work (no one would frankly care). Of course it comes up in social settings or when I’m entertaining corporate clients but I swat it aside as quickly as it’s raised by downplaying it. I feel genuine embarrassment because even if they are ignorant of this military etiquette faux pas, I am not - and that bothers my conscience.

In the village my parents live there is a retired brigadier and retired general and everyone, including myself, have gone out of our way to address them as such out of respect.

In the building I live here in Paris one of my French neighbours who lives below me is a retired highly decorated army general. I always address him as ‘mon Général’ out of deference.

He has crusty aristocratic manners and can come across as a fussy old fart. He’s a widower and a proud old soldier seasoned in the bloodiest of wars. He’s not easy to warm to but the effort is worthwhile.

I volunteered to get him his food shopping during this pandemic and at first he was too proud to ask but I persisted. And he’s very particular about his food and so I have to trek to particular boutique shops to satisfy his gourmand palate.

He scowled in polite disapproval when I told him I was in the army and saw action as he’s old school and doesn’t believe women should serve on the front line. But gradually I have been winning him over. I sometimes cook for him or he cooks for me and we chat about military history and politics and we play chess regularly (whilst respecting social distance). We have big disagreements about certain battles or military campaigns for instance but he respects that I can hold my ground….until he pulls rank on me when he’s clearly backed into a corner (!) but again out of deference I let him have the last say as I bow down to ‘mon Général’.

It’s interesting to note that Princess Anne’s former husband Captain Mark Phillips was often derided for choosing to use his military rank in civilian life. But I’ve been told by Donkey Walloper** officer friends that cavalry etiquette is unique to their horsemen heritage and so it was common for Cavalry officers to keep their rank into retirement.

Now to get back to Captain Tom Moore. He has never served in the Cavalry regiments because as I understand it he served with the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment and later with the Royal Armoured Corps. So I suspect the newspaper media were ignorant of the existing etiquette and basically mainstreamed his veteran status and labelled him as Captain Tom Moore. No harm no foul as they say. Because in my book after his walking heroics he can call himself whatever he likes. Truth be told I hope he does get knighted because he is deserving of it.

Thanks for your question.

**Donkey Wallopers is the nickname of cavalry regiments.

#ask #question #army rank #title #rank #british army #army #cavalry #personal

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thepatriotplace-blog · 4 years

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The Patriot Warrior Class

Its been awhile since I’ve posted on Tumblr. In fact I actually kind of forgot I had the account. I created this account a few years ago and I named it “the patriot place”. Pretty self explanatory.

Let me tell you about me. I am first and foremost a patriotic American. I have always called myself a patriot. I’ve been a libertarian party member for many years. I’ve voted in many POTUS general elections for the libertarian candidate (with the exception of 2x). I’ve always had a deep love for the US constitution have spoken out about the blatant corruption of the constitution that has been going on in America my whole life.

I also consider myself a warrior. Although I have never served in the military I was a police officer for 25 years and have since retired. My duties as a police officer included SWAT and emergency tactical medicine. I have been trained by the best warriors America has to offer.

Since the election of Donald Trump (who I didn’t vote for) I have seen the rapid decay of the Libertarian Party. It has become polluted with progressives, pedophiles and people suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. My interactions with the neo-libertarians has been sad. Justin Amash has completely flipped in my view and I align more with Rand Paul than I do with Ron Paul. Jo Jorgesen who is the Libertarian’s Party POTUS candidate is and her public support of a Marxist organization was the last straw for me. I am no longer a member of the libertarian party.

I now consider myself a member of the patriot warrior class. I am prepared to fight and die for the Republic and its constitution. I took an oath to uphold the constitution of the United States and that doesn’t end when there is (Ret.) at the end of my name. There are many like me. Men and women who served and are currently serving to protect our Republic who believe in what I believe in are what will save this country from the Marxist insurrection, which is back politically by the Democrat Party and financed by the CCP and George Soros that is taking place within the US’s borders.

The neo-libertarians wont fight for the Republic. They are feckless and nothing more than internet bottle throwers and trolls. Their mentality is the same as the progressives, ‘Burn it down at all costs to get Trump out.”

The single most important event that turned the page in this chapter in my life had to be Trump’s speech at the National Archives Museum on Constitution Day. I have never heard a politician since Reagan deliver a speech more patriotic than this speech. I’ve included the transcript of that speech. So I will end this post with this.... In 2020 I will vote Vote Trump.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thank you, Mike. A great Vice President. I am truly honored to be here at the very first White House Conference on American History. So important.

Our mission is to defend the legacy of America’s founding, the virtue of America’s heroes, and the nobility of the American character. We must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms, and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country. We want our sons and daughters to know that they are the citizens of the most exceptional nation in the history of the world. (Applause.)

To grow up in America is to live in a land where anything is possible, where anyone can rise, and where any dream can come true — all because of the immortal principles our nation’s founders inscribed nearly two and a half centuries ago.

That’s why we have come to the National Archives, the sacred home of our national memory. In this great chamber, we preserve our glorious inheritance: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights.

On this very day in 1787, our Founding Fathers signed the Constitution at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It was the fulfillment of a thousand years of Western civilization. Our Constitution was the product of centuries of tradition, wisdom, and experience. No political document has done more to advance the human condition or propel the engine of progress.

Yet, as we gather this afternoon, a radical movement is attempting to demolish this treasured and precious inheritance. We can’t let that happen. (Applause.) Left-wing mobs have torn down statues of our founders, desecrated our memorials, and carried out a campaign of violence and anarchy. Far-left demonstrators have chanted the words “America was never great.” The left has launched a vicious and violent assault on law enforcement — the universal symbol of the rule of law in America. These radicals have been aided and abetted by liberal politicians, establishment media, and even large corporations.

Whether it is the mob on the street, or the cancel culture in the boardroom, the goal is the same: to silence dissent, to scare you out of speaking the truth, and to bully Americans into abandoning their values, their heritage, and their very way of life.

We are here today to declare that we will never submit to tyranny. We will reclaim our history and our country for citizens of every race, color, religion, and creed.

The radicals burning American flags want to burn down the principles enshrined in our founding documents, including the bedrock principle of equal justice under law. In order to radically transform America, they must first cause Americans to lose confidence in who we are, where we came from, and what we believe. As I said at Mount Rushmore — which they would love to rip down and it rip it down fast, and that’s never going to happen — two months ago, the left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution.

As many of you testified today, the left-wing rioting and mayhem are the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools. It’s gone on far too long. Our children are instructed from propaganda tracts, like those of Howard Zinn, that try to make students ashamed of their own history.

The left has warped, distorted, and defiled the American story with deceptions, falsehoods, and lies. There is no better example than the New York Times’ totally discredited 1619 Project. This project rewrites American history to teach our children that we were founded on the principle of oppression, not freedom.

Nothing could be further from the truth. America’s founding set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism, and built the most fair, equal, and prosperous nation in human history. (Applause.)

The narratives about America being pushed by the far-left and being chanted in the streets bear a striking resemblance to the anti-American propaganda of our adversaries — because both groups want to see America weakened, derided, and totally diminished.

Students in our universities are inundated with critical race theory. This is a Marxist doctrine holding that America is a wicked and racist nation, that even young children are complicit in oppression, and that our entire society must be radically transformed. Critical race theory is being forced into our children’s schools, it’s being imposed into workplace trainings, and it’s being deployed to rip apart friends, neighbors, and families.

A perfect example of critical race theory was recently published by the Smithsonian Institution. This document alleged that concepts such as hard work, rational thinking, the nuclear family, and belief in God were not values that unite all Americans, but were instead aspects of “whiteness.” This is offensive and outrageous to Americans of every ethnicity, and it is especially harmful to children of minority backgrounds who should be uplifted, not disparaged.

Teaching this horrible doctrine to our children is a form of child abuse in the truest sense of those words. For many years now, the radicals have mistaken Americans’ silence for weakness. But they’re wrong.

There is no more powerful force than a parent’s love for their children. And patriotic moms and dads are going to demand that their children are no longer fed hateful lies about this country. American parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools, cancel culture at our work, or the repression of traditional faith, culture, and values in the public square. Not anymore. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

We embrace the vision of Martin Luther King, where children are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

The left is attempting to destroy that beautiful vision and divide Americans by race in the service of political power. By viewing every issue through the lens of race, they want to impose a new segregation, and we must not allow that to happen.

Critical race theory, the 1619 Project, and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda, ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together. It will destroy our country.

That is why I recently banned trainings in this prejudiced ideology from the federal government and banned it in the strongest manner possible. (Applause.)

The only path to national unity is through our shared identity as Americans. That is why it is so urgent that we finally restore patriotic education to our schools.

Under our leadership, the National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a grant to support the development of a pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation’s great history. (Applause.)

We are joined by some of the respected scholars involved in this project, including Professor Wilfred McClay. Wilfred, please. Thank you very much. Welcome. (Applause.) Thank you. Dr. Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars. Dr. Peter. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. And Ted Rebarber. Thank you, Ted. (Applause.) Thank you very much, Ted.

Today, I am also pleased to announce that I will soon sign an Executive Order establishing a national commission to promote patriotic education. It will be called the “1776 Commission.” (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. It will encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history and make plans to honor the 250th anniversary of our founding. Think of that — 250 years.

Recently, I also signed an executive order to establish the National Garden of American Heroes, a vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans who have ever lived.

Today, I am announcing a new name for inclusion. One of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence was a patriot from Delaware. In July of 1776, the Continental Congress was deadlocked during the debate over independence. The delegation from Delaware was divided. Caesar Rodney was called upon to break the tie.

Even though he was suffering from very advanced cancer — he was deathly ill — Rodney rode 80 miles through the night, through a severe thunderstorm, from Dover to Philadelphia to cast his vote for independence.

For nearly a century, a statue of one of Delaware’s most beloved citizens stood in Rodney Square, right in the heart of Wilmington.

But this past June, Caesar Rodney’s statue was ordered removed by the mayor and local politicians as part of a radical purge of America’s founding generation.

Today, because of an order I signed, if you demolish a statue without permission, you immediately get 10 years in prison. (Applause.) And there have been no statues demolished for the last four months, incredibly, since the time I signed that act.

Joe Biden said nothing as to his home state’s history and the fact that it was dismantled and dismembered. And a Founding Father’s statue was removed.

Today, America will give this Founding Father, this very brave man, who was so horribly treated, the place of honor he deserves. I am announcing that a statue of Caesar Rodney will be added to the National Garden of American Heroes. (Applause.)

From Washington to Lincoln, from Jefferson to King, America has been home to some of the most incredible people who have ever lived. With the help of everyone here today, the legacy of 1776 will never be erased. Our heroes will never be forgotten. Our youth will be taught to love America with all of their heart and all of their soul.

We will save this cherished inheritance for our children, for their children, and for every generation to come. This is a very important day.

Thank you all once again for being here. Now I will sign the Constitution Day Proclamation. God Bless You. And God Bless America. Thank you very much.

#trump #nationalarchives #libertarian #liberty #freedom #trump2020 #potus45 #potustrump

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tabloidtoc · 3 years

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National Enquirer, November 30

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: The Kennedy family torn apart

Page 2: Angry and isolated Caitlyn Jenner is on a downward emotional spiral that some friends believe have left her one step from the psycho ward -- she feels shunned by her own family and can’t find romance and is unhappy with with her looks -- Caitlyn is so tense and insecure and sensitive about everything so she’s diving into more and more prospective projects in a desperate effort to kickstart her flagging career and she’s flying off the handle all the time plus she’s tried to drown her sorrows in a new round of cosmetic improvements including a face-lift and lipo to trim her waist and thighs but she’s horrified she’s still not happy with her looks after all her surgeries

Page 3: Lovestruck Halle Berry has leapt headfirst into a red-hot romance with Van Hunt but the singer is a skirt-chasing cheat -- Van and his ex-wife split in 2007 after she said he abandoned her and their only child to move to L.A. and she claimed the musician admitted adultery shortly before divorce documents were filed -- Halle would be disturbed to hear that Van walked out on his son because she’s a very family-oriented person and she could never imagine living on the other side of the country to her kids -- Van’s grown and matured since the divorce and is sure to have shared all about his situation with Halle and he’s said to be on good terms with his ex-wife but people say once a cheater always a cheater and that’s got to be at the back of Halle’s mind

Page 4: Runaway Prince Harry is reeling after being publicly snubbed by his royal relatives and now he is having second thoughts about ditching his official duties for a glam life in Hollywood; he’s finally realizing just what he gave up when he left England with wife Meghan Markle and their son Archie and he’s wondering if it was worth it -- the simmering rift between Harry and the royals exploded after they refused his request to be part of Britain’s Remembrance Day ceremonies to honor fallen soldiers so Harry retaliated by staging a photo op at Los Angeles National Cemetery with Meghan with his military medals pinned on his navy suit; Harry was banned from wearing his military uniform when he quit royal duties and he also had to give up his military duties which devastated him -- photos from the cemetery released by the couple triggered an immediate backlash and they were accused of being shameless publicity-seekers trying to steal headlines and overshadow the royals doing their duty back home; it was a disaster and Harry was shocked -- he’s reaching out to the palace to make amends but calls to his brother Prince William and father Prince Charles have gone unanswered

* Katie Holmes and Emilio Vitolo Jr.’s hot new romance is in a pressure cooker as their families fight to claim the couple as their guests for the holidays -- things were going great for them but this tug-of-war may tear them apart because Emilio’s folks told him they want him home with them but Katie is desperate to spend Christmas with her relatives in Ohio and they really want to meet her new boyfriend and Katie is feeling guilty because she spends so much time with Emilio’s clan at his dad’s Manhattan eatery so she thinks it’s only fair that he does this for her but Emilio’s never missed a holiday gathering with his own family and there are a lot of them he hasn’t seen because of the pandemic

Page 5: Celine Dion is finally ready to put the past behind her as the fifth anniversary of her beloved husband’s death approaches in January and she is planning to leave Las Vegas with their sons and she is pining to return to her native Quebec and give twins Nelson and Eddy and 19-year-old Rene-Charles a taste of her own childhood -- Celine had been careful to not upset her kids’ lives since the death of their dad from throat cancer but she now believes the boys would benefit from spending time in The Great White North -- she also thinks it might be more likely she’ll find lasting love in her home country

Page 6: Defiantly plump Lizzo has ditched her diet and frightened friends are staging an intervention to get her to a fat farm to save her life -- Lizzo had committed to eating vegan after weighing in at 350 pounds but once on vacation it lasted like two days before she couldn’t take it any longer -- she has anxiety issues and uses food to comfort herself but the stress the weight is putting on her heart and other organs could have a detrimental effect on her health and cut her life short

Page 7: Mark Harmon and Pauley Perrette have agreed to meet for peace talks after a long-simmering feud triggered her angry departure from NCIS and Mark reached out to her to invite her back -- Mark feels bad about how Pauley left the show and knows she played a big role in its success and he’s anxious to set things right between them and bring back one of the show’s favorite all-time characters for fans -- Mark also feels he’s been painted unfairly in Pauley’s departure and would like to know he was not behind it but the two clashed for years with Pauley charging Mark’s bullying caused her to quit the show and Pauley even tweeted she is terrified of Harmon and him attacking her -- while Pauley is not saying yes or no to returning to the show she’s definitely willing to sit down and talk

* The drama between sickly Phil Collins and his squatting ex-wife Orianne Cevey is really getting down and dirty with Orianne charging that Phil degenerated into a pill-popping addict who stopped showering and brushing his teeth and was impotent and she also claimed Phil became emotionally and verbally abusive and refused to provide emotional support or love or care for her -- Phil’s lawyers said Orianne’s charges are scandalous and scurrilous and unethical and for the most part patently false or grossly exaggerated

Page 8: Power-hungry host Savannah Guthrie is gunning to be the reigning queen of Today and is willing to walk over anyone to achieve her goal and her blind ambition is ripping the once-invincible morning show apart and she even used Al Roker’s prostate cancer diagnosis to push her own agenda and capitalize on Al’s absence for surgery to demand more airtime for herself -- every meeting starts with the focus on whatever Savannah wants and the staff is far from happy about it and morale has never been worse -- Savannah has constantly pushed the producers for Jenna Bush Hager and herself to take the lead on big news stories and keep Hoda Kotb stuck in the fluffy stuff and Hoda’s completely pissed off -- Savannah’s rising star has come with temper tantrums and diva-like demands -- fed-up Hoda recently met with friends of Gayle King and there is speculation the two women could make a powerful pairing and revitalize third-place CBS This Morning

Page 9: Regis Philbin’s death certificate reveals paramedics waged a desperate 40-minute battle to try to save his life -- he suffered a heart attack just after 3 a.m. on July 24 at his home in Connecticut and he was rushed to the emergency room where medics fought to save his life but he eventually succumbed at 4:18 a.m.

Page 10: Hot Shots -- Queen Latifah on the NYC set of The Equalizer, socially distant host Ellen DeGeneres went the extra mile to greet guest Jimmy Kimmel on her talk show, Steve Schirripa and Bridget Moynahan shot Blue Bloods in NYC, Kristen Taekman prettied up her pout in L.A., Tracy Morgan attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new community center at Brooklyn’s Marcy Houses

Page 11: Smitten ‘70s TV stars Patrick Duffy and Linda Purl may owe their late-in-life romance to Zoom but according to the actress the couple didn’t rush their relationship -- the two have been friends for decades but a COVID-19 group video chat helped spark love during lockdown -- after one of their lengthy one-on-one conversations Patrick jumped into his car and drove 20 hours from L.A. to her Colorado home like a lovestruck teenager

* Beloved Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek left behind a final touching message for his fans and it will be extremely moving -- Alex’s final message will follow his last episode of Jeopardy! set to air on Christmas Day

Page 12: Straight Shuter -- Joel Michaely at the opening of The Comeback Trail (picture)

* Kelly Clarkson’s divorce meant she booted ex Brandon Blackstock out of her professional life but he’ll still be in her work life thanks to Blake Shelton -- Brandon might not be Kelly’s manager anymore but he still manages Blake which might get awkward when Kelly runs into him backstage at The Voice

* Keeping Up with the Kardashians is notching all-time low ratings and the family is blaming Kim Kardashian saying she’s lost her sense of humor and she’s too busy trying to be taken seriously

* Nitpicky Ryan Seacrest has ditched celebrity designer Nate Berkus’ husband Jeremiah Brent as his decorator because they had a nasty falling out over the renovation of Ryan’s townhouse in New York City

Page 13: Steve Harvey’s daughter Lori Harvey escaped jail time after cops claimed she fled the scene of a Beverly Hills car crash in 2019 -- she was charged with two misdemeanors for hit-and-run and delaying a police investigation after she walked away from a smashup that damaged her Mercedes G-wagon and nearly destroyed another vehicle but she cut a deal with prosecutors and pleaded no contest to resisting arrest and will serve two years probation -- she reportedly had been texting at the time of the accident

* Reba McEntire confirmed she turned down a regular role on The Voice which left the life-changing gig open for Blake Shelton -- Reba said she didn’t think she could ever tell somebody that they’re terrible

* Cancer warrior Olivia Newton-John revealed she kicked a dependence on morphine with medical marijuana -- to cope with her pain during her third bout with breast cancer that had spread in 2017 doctors put her on mega doses of the highly addictive drug and she weaned herself off the morphine with the cannabis which she thinks is incredible and says people should know that because you’re not going to die from cannabis and you can use it to wean off morphine and she’s continued on a regime with cannabis ever since

Page 14: Crime

Page 15: Los Angeles’ newly elected District Attorney George Gascon has vowed to reopen the probe into actress Natalie Wood’s mysterious drowning and her husband Robert Wagner could finally be dragged before a grand jury -- Gascon said he’ll work with investigators from the L.A. Sheriff’s Department homicide squad to reexamine the case after the previous D.A. refused to present evidence to a grand jury -- Natalie drowned in 1981 while enjoying a holiday with Robert and actor Christopher Walken off Catalina Island

Page 16: The Talk has been thrown into chaos by cast shake-ups and co-host Sharon Osbourne’s power grab and may be on the verge of being silenced forever -- staffers are expecting the worst after popular co-host Eve announced she was splitting after four seasons becoming the latest in a long line of damaging departures and while Eve blamed her exit on COVID-19 travel restrictions from England much of the blame goes to self-promotional Sharon’s relentless efforts to take over the show after former moderator Julie Chen’s departure last year -- Sharon has made it clear she’s in charge now and the other ladies are not thrilled with being reduced to supporting cast and fans have started calling for Sharon’s head

Page 17: John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono has sparked fears she’s nearing the end after handing her business dealings off to their son Sean Lennon -- the wheelchair-bound Yoko had been managing the late Beatle’s vast $800 million holdings since his 1980 shooting death but it’s now beyond her abilities

Page 18: American Life

Page 19: Johnny Depp is writing and planning to star in a tell-all movie about his divorce war with loathed ex-wife Amber Heard -- after a U.K. court ruled he was physically abusive toward Amber during their marriage Johnny wants to tell the world his version of the marriage and he will set people straight about what happened and clear his name to millions to fans and he believes this is a slam dunk once he gets it in front of the right producer especially as he’s more than willing to play himself

* The family of vicious Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger has filed a lawsuit against the federal government accusing prison officials of orchestrating the 2018 hit on the Mob boss -- the action accuses the Federal Bureau of Prisons of intentional or deliberately indifferent deeds that led to the murder of the wheelchair-bound mobster just hours after he was inexplicably transferred to the Hazelton penitentiary in West Virginia where he was beaten to death by prisoners to keep him from singing about corruption inside the FBI and the Department of Justice -- Whitey was bludgeoned with a padlock stuffed inside a sock and his murderers had enough time to cut out his tongue and eyes to make it seem like a classic Mafia hit

Page 20: Angelina Jolie lives in constant fear one of her six children will be kidnapped and held for ransom according to her former bodyguard -- Angie and her ex Brad Pitt are worth hundreds of millions which Angie feared provided plenty of incentive for criminals to target her offspring

* Hollywood Hookups -- Sofia Richie and Matthew Morton dating, Sabrina Parr and Lamar Odom split, Daniela Rajic and Paul George engaged

Page 21: Justin Bieber’s pastor Carl Lentz lost his job over a steamy affair with an exotic beauty -- Lentz was fired from the megachurch Hillsong and his mistress claimed the two were in love

* Wildlife lover Bindi Irwin has announced 20 weeks into pregnancy her baby is the size of a tiny emu -- she delivered the news flash beneath a photo with her husband Chandler Powell appropriately taken at the Australia Zoo

* Hugh Grant made a bizarre confession admitting his bout with COVID-19 left him wanting to sniff strangers’ armpits -- Hugh revealed he tested positive for coronavirus antibodies and believes he contracted the bug in February and the illness caused a feeling of an enormous man sitting on his chest but Hugh also claimed he was rattled by losing his sense of smell which is a known symptom of the disease and purposely sought out putrid odors to test his useless nose

Page 22: Jailed Ghislaine Maxwell’s latest devastating court defeat has heightened fears that the woman accused of being billionaire sex fiend Jeffrey Epstein’s madam will die behind bars just as he did -- since July Maxwell has been locked up in solitary confinement at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center where her jailers subject her to daily strip and cell searches and is monitored 24 hours a day she doesn’t suffer the same fate as Epstein whose death was officially ruled a suicide -- now the U.S. Court of Appeals has denied her bid to publicly name the women who have come forward in the media and civil actions as Epstein’s alleged victims and implicated the British socialite in his twisted sex ring so the damning decision upheld an earlier ruling and shattered her defense team’s bid to investigate and refute the claims of the unnamed accusers

Page 23: Tom Cruise’s plan to shoot the first movie in space may be in jeopardy after Russia vowed to beat him to it -- Tom has teamed with tech billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX program to film the unnamed project on the International Space Station in October 2021 -- but a rival Russian agency plans to already be in outer space by then and the Russian film is titled Challenge and its team has sent out a casting call for a female lead -- Tom sees this as a gauntlet being thrown down and he always rises to the challenge and he’s told SpaceX they have to get up there before next October

Page 28: Cover Story -- Kennedy curse rips clan apart -- the family takes sides as Michael Skakel skates and William Kennedy Smith stalls $50 million will

Page 32: Ric Ocasek’s oldest son has blasted him as a deadbeat dad who was never there -- Chris Otcasek who uses the original spelling of the family name wrote on Instagram that his father in essence died the day he was born and he was never present and he was never there -- Ric left his mom who was his second wife Suzanne while she was pregnant with their second child

* Lisa Marie Presley has had a medical emergency so severe it brought her bitter custody trial with fourth ex-husband Michael Lockwood to a halt

Page 36: Health, Ask the Vet

Page 38: Pope John Paul II was aware that disgraced and defrocked Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was a pedophile but elevated him anyway to the powerful post of Archbishop of Washington D.C. in 2001 -- McCarrick had showered over $600,000 in donations on powerful clerics including Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict while facing allegations of abuse -- Pope Francis finally defrocked McCarrick in 2019

Page 42: Red Carpet -- Mandy Moore

Page 45: Spot the Differences -- Emma Corrin as Princess Diana in The Crown

Page 47: Odd List

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esqreverblog · 4 years

Text

A cut above: António Variações, Portugal's queer pop superstar

In 1984, national grief at Variações’s gruelling death was overpowered by scrutiny of Aids, which was still relatively mysterious. According to Couto Pinto: “It was hard to keep him alive when listeners buried him in stigma and only talked about him regarding the disease, as though the reason for his death was more important than the artist and the work he left behind.”His reappraisal began in 2004, when the supergroup Humanos was assembled to record his remaining demo tapes. The result was a multi-platinum album. Rarefied support followed through homages on TV talent shows and tributes from other artists, and in 2019, Variações dominated the public consciousness once again. His biopic, an art house Rocketman, garnered mixed reviews but became one of the highest-grossing Portuguese films of all time. Its lead actor went on a national tour with a Variações cover band.According to Cascais, this “appropriation as a cultural icon” comes at a cost of downplaying Variações’s sexuality and smoothing over the polarised response to him in his heyday and after his death. “In life, he was loved by some and disregarded by others”, says Couto Pinto. “Most important of all is he never generated indifference.”A hedonist loved by the people, a humble man behind a commanding posture, Variações injected colour into 1980s Portugal. “I feel like I was born before my time”, he said in 1983; one year later, he lamented “having to die”, dreading “the depressive ending”.It’s a good thing, then, that his verses continue to echo throughout his native country. From bathrooms in Lisbon to the greenery of Minho, the existential nomadism of Estou Além prevails as an anthem: “Because I only want whom I have never seen … Because I only want to go where I do not go.” António Variações is still going, still finding people he has never seen.n the midst of wild olive trees, a muscular man sporting pink hair and a woman’s swimming costume stares into a mirror. There, at the meeting point of pastoral and queer, is António Variações: Portugal’s first gay icon, who shook the country from its post-revolution torpor after fascism’s 41-year reign. A country boy, hairdresser and pop star, Variações silenced homophobia with free expression – and has been reborn as an icon 35 years after his death

‘I adore the sound of scissors, but nothing comes close to a guitar or a violin’ ... António Variações. Photograph: Teresa Couto Pinto

In the midst of wild olive trees, a muscular man sporting pink hair and a woman’s swimming costume stares into a mirror. There, at the meeting point of pastoral and queer, is António Variações: Portugal’s first gay icon, who shook the country from its post-revolution torpor after fascism’s 41-year reign.

These radical photographs provided the artwork for Variações’s final album, Dar & Receber (To Give & to Receive), released in May 1984. He would die the next month, on the feast day of Lisbon’s most beloved saint, António, marking what was widely believed to be the country’s first public Aids-related death. A gay man who had defined the zeitgeist, Variações was now the poster child for a taboo that threatened to consume his legacy. At his funeral the coffin was sealed because of safety concerns, and his remaining clothes were burnt.

Yet Variações’s spirit has survived, and become synonymous with Pride month celebrations each June in Portugal. Last year’s culminated with an António Variações sing-along; then in August, a long-awaited biopic, Variações, became the country’s highest-grossing film of the year. Thirty-five years after his death, he has regained his place in Portuguese culture. Variações had always sworn he would go down in history – “even if only the history of a bathroom wall”.

The quote dates back to 1983, when Variações was on the brink of his watershed moment. That moment was was 27 years in the making, starting when he left the province of Minho, aged 11, for Lisbon. Variações never lost connection with his rural home but even as a child, he knew it couldn’t nurture his ambition: to hone the melodies that flowed through his head into life-affirming music.

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Born in 1944, he lived through the repressive Estado Novo regime for three decades. He worked in menial jobs, served in the Portuguese military and at one point moved to London. But it was his time in Amsterdam, in the mid-70s, that created Variações the icon, as the historian Manuela Gonzaga writes in her biography António Variações: Entre Braga e Nova Iorque. Life in the Dutch city afforded Variações a political and sexual freedom that was still embryonic in Portugal after the peaceful coup of 1974. The gay clubs and darkrooms in which he revelled were anathema in a nation where would take until 1982 for homosexual activity to be legalised.

When Variações returned to Portugal in 1976, he became a face of the progressive Príncipe Real neighbourhood, and later of Bairro Alto, where a dormant culture began to erupt. A new generation of musicians, journalists, architects and others met up in drag venues and alternative bars. “The arts were emerging after a ruthless censorship that had kept creatives clandestine,” his ex-manager and close friend Teresa Couto Pinto explains. “It sparked inside us a need to confront established values.”

Although Variações set up camp as a barber, music remained his ambition: “I adore the sound of scissors but nothing comes close to a guitar or a violin,” he said. At home, he eschewed strings for handclaps and a portable drum machine, recording demo tapes that earned him a record deal with Portugal’s top rock label, Valentim de Carvalho.

He introduced a fashion sense that was alien to Lisbon. Gonzaga describes it as a “gratuitous, fascinating display”: below his two-toned beard, he could wed tight trousers to bedroom slippers as easily as he mixed leather straps with knitted sweaters. Couto Pinto says she helped him wrap poultry netting around his torso, and sewed door locks and hinges to his arms and legs. “I have never dressed to provoke anyone”, he said, describing his camp style as “an act of freedom towards myself, out of pleasure”.

Variações was “at the dawn of a [gay] collective consciousness in Portugal,” says the queer studies academic António Fernando Cascais, “because he pioneered a counter-image of his own”. Any homophobic remarks – even though Variações never came out publicly – were forgotten as soon as he took the stage.

He made his TV debut in 1981, during the Sunday variety show on Portugal’s sole broadcaster. He sang a punk metaphor about pills while a dancer dressed as a giant aspirin threw Smarties at the dumbfounded audience. Nothing so transgressive had ever graced Portugal’s airwaves. Opposing the country’s deep-seated conservatism, “the audience adhered immediately, with no reservations”, to the surprise of the illustrious host Júlio Isidro, as he told a journalist. His “meteoric stardom”, Gonzaga says, pushed his label to take him off the backburner.

Variações overcame his lack of musicianship amid members of the rock elite, who helped him translate his inner world of sounds, fusing the pop vanguard and the traditional melodies of his childhood. His 1983 bestselling debut LP, Anjo da Guarda (Guardian Angel), set his fado inflections – a homage to the singer Amália Rodrigues, his idol and later his friend – to a new-wave backdrop, while the follow-up album Dar & Receber balanced disco-rock with melancholy synthpop.

His pen reconciled popular wisdom and queer identity. His songs O Corpo É Que Paga (The Body Pays the Price) and É P’ra Amanhã (Leave It ’Til Tomorrow), both pages in the great Portuguese songbook, reinvented proverbs to tell life lessons. Variações also made queer alienation feel universal: today you might hear supermarket shoppers humming along to the proto-Robyn desperation of Canção de Engate (Hookup Song), despite its bleak depiction of gay cruising (“You are alone and I am even more so”).

His reappraisal began in 2004, when the supergroup Humanos was assembled to record his remaining demo tapes. The result was a multi-platinum album. Rarefied support followed through homages on TV talent shows and tributes from other artists, and in 2019, Variações dominated the public consciousness once again. His biopic, an art house Rocketman, garnered mixed reviews but became one of the highest-grossing Portuguese films of all time. Its lead actor went on a national tour with a Variações cover band.

According to Cascais, this “appropriation as a cultural icon” comes at a cost of downplaying Variações’s sexuality and smoothing over the polarised response to him in his heyday and after his death. “In life, he was loved by some and disregarded by others”, says Couto Pinto. “Most important of all is he never generated indifference.”

A hedonist loved by the people, a humble man behind a commanding posture, Variações injected colour into 1980s Portugal. “I feel like I was born before my time”, he said in 1983; one year later, he lamented “having to die”, dreading “the depressive ending”.

It’s a good thing, then, that his verses continue to echo throughout his native country. From bathrooms in Lisbon to the greenery of Minho, the existential nomadism of Estou Além prevails as an anthem: “Because I only want whom I have never seen … Because I only want to go where I do not go.” António Variações is still going, still finding people he has never seen.

Source: [X]

#antonio variações #lgbtq #portugal #music #aids

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jontrayner · 4 years

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Mechanised Dreams and Peasant Imaginaries

As I have been teaching undergraduates on an Illustration degree, I have been paying even more attention to concept art and sci-fi/fantasy illustration than I usually do. In the past this attention has generally been unfocused and un-theorised, my enjoyment of these images being that of purely visual entertainment. However, a series of images by the Polish artist Jakub Rozalski recently grabbed my attention more than usual and prompted me to think a bit more about a couple of entwined topics: The role of the image of the peasant in the formation of national identity, and the fabrication of history. I have a particular interest in this, from an anarchist position, considering the rural poor’s involvement both in pre-modern revolt and in non-authoritarian leftist revolution. The narratives of “history” tend however to write the peasant in the role of defender of the nation and promoter of conservative values.

Rozalski’s series 1920+ consists of a number of diesel-punk digital paintings focussing on an alternate history of the brief Polish-Soviet War of that year. In these paintings the war is imagined as a science fiction conflict between giant war-mecha similar to that found in the Warhammer 40K universe. The imagery takes on the dark and oppressive feeling and the combination of high-tech war machines and primitive civilian subsistence of 40K, but instead of focussing on battle, the images rather present the pauses, or pre-battle manoeuvres of the machines in the countryside. Bringing to mind the Martian war machines striding across the English pastoral of The War of the Worlds – or the description of a jet engine loaded onto a horse and cart to be taken from the factory to the train depot in John Timberlake's Landscape and the Science Fiction Imaginary (2018 p.75). In Rozalski’s paintings it is true that “the future is already here, it is just unevenly distributed” (Gibson, 2018).

What makes these paintings interesting for me is that alongside these fantasy stylings they present a depiction of rural peasant life in pre-industrial Poland. A world where sheep are herded, and crops are scythed by hand by figures in traditional Polish dress – the world of 19th century Romantic and Realist nationalist painting. This is heightened by the similarity between Rozalski’s loose mark-making and that of the Polish Romantic Piotr Michałowski. This connection to the painting of the late 1800s is not coincidental; this was the period when the ideas of realism were put into the service of various nationalist projects. Cultural forms were deployed to bolster the credentials of both large states, but also subaltern and colonised populations; like the Poles. This search for a national identity through reference to the peasantry is traced by Margaret Carroll back to the northern Renaissance and the work of artists like Sebald Beham and Pieter Bruegel:

The growing assertiveness over native rights in the political sphere in the 1550s and 1560s was matched by ethnic self-consciousness in the cultural sphere […] the defense of native culture and customs promoted a benign attitude towards and even a sense of identification with the country's rural inhabitants. (1987 p.296)

The re-emergence of this identification with the peasant class in the 19th century is linked by T.J. Clark to the desire by the industrial bourgeoisie to reconnect with their recent rural past (1973 p.124). These viewers wanted to see the countryside, that they only now saw from trains, or on daytrips, and that their parents or maybe even themselves, had so recently escaped from, not as a place of poverty, ignorance, and grinding subsistence in the face of ever present famine, but rather one of plenty, relaxation, and harmony with the seasons and the earth. As Clark points out the initial realism of Gustave Courbet was met with anger from the Paris Salon because it refused to take part in this fiction; presenting the rural inhabitants of Ornans as individuals rather than as idealisations of a type (ibid. p.85). Later Realists did not have these scruples and were happy to idealise the rural poor, as can be seen in the work of Jean-François Millet and Jules Bastien-Lepage. A similar exercise was undertaken with regards to national identity with the Slavic Realists; Russian artists such as Ilya Repin used paintings such as Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV (1891) to foster a sense of Russian-ness or, in a Polish context, Jan Matejko’s history paintings and Zygmunt Ajdukiewicz’s depictions of national dress. These works drew attention to Poland’s past glories and current cultural distinctiveness as part of the push for an independent Polish state. This subversion of Realism and of history is a product of an understanding of the fictional nature of history post-Hegel where “writing history and writing stories come under the same regime of truth” (Rancière, 2004 p.38).

The idea that peasant dress is an unadulterated expression of identity is by and large a 19th century fabrication – most famously expressed through the invention of the kilt as Scottish national dress (Green, 2017). Griselda Pollock and Fred Orton examination of this in relation to the depictions of Breton peasant women by Parisian artists pointing out that these “traditional” forms were the result of the increased prosperity of (some) peasants during the previous century – “costume came to signify region, locality, class, wealth and marital status within a nouveau-riche peasantry” (1980 p.327). Ulinka Rublack argues that the assumption that peasant costume was “virtually immobile for centuries” (2010 p.262) is inaccurate – it is rather a product of this desire to see the peasant as an unchanging model for the national spirit. This links together:

A certain idea of history as common destiny, with an idea of those who ‘make history’, and that this interpenetration of the logic of facts and the logic of stories is specific to an age when anyone and everyone is considered to be participating in the task of ‘making’ history. (Rancière, 2004 p.39)

This can obviously serve to give the peasants a sense of their own agency as a political and cultural force, but that requires the peasant to identify with the image of themselves with which they are presented. If the identification only happens amongst the urban petit-bourgeoise who are looking for a hook to hang their nationhood on, then that can lead to a sense of “false” history of the type we are currently witnessing in right-wing populist discourse.

Taken in this sense one cannot help but see Rozalski’s paintings as a reactionary expression of nationalism – of the sort that is becoming grimly familiar across Europe, as borders are closed, and minorities hounded. The depictions of military hardware and agricultural labour could certainly be seen as part the blood and soil traditions of mid-20th century fascism, but is this necessarily the case? In his description of Kosciuszko Squadron on his website he refers to the 1920 war as being fought to preserve “Polish independence” which suggests, at least, an anti-communist position. However, looking at Rozalski’s other paintings outside this series there is no indication of any particular attachment to the contemporary Polish national project, and the celebrations of pagan traditions certainly demonstrate no love of Catholicism. Though this could be argued to be an alignment with fascist neo-folk paganism of the type discussed by Anton Shekhovtsov (2009). While Rozalski’s more traditional fantasy works do not escape from the characterisation of all fantasy as essentially backward looking and reactionary (see Michael Moorcock's 1978 essay; Epic Pooh), they do have a healthy anti-authoritarianism that it is difficult to square with any sense of national superiority or ethnic supremacy.

The 1920+ images themselves are relatively neutral, the Soviet and Polish forces are not depicted in moral terms, and the peasants are largely indifferent spectators to the conflict – an exception being The Youngest Sister, though the implication here is that it is the familial relationship that causes the connection between soldier and peasant. This brings to mind John Berger's quotation of a Russian peasant proverb: “Don't run away from anything, but don't do anything” (1978 p.346). It is this peasant tradition that I want to turn to now. Rozalski might be accused of valorising his peasantry, at a point when post-communist Polish society is undergoing a second “modernisation” (Tymiński and Koryś, 2015), but these peasant values can point towards a site of resistance of the mechanisms of both the state and capital.

It could be that Rozalski's peasants are indifferent because they know that it does not matter if either the nationalists or the communists win – because neither side truly cares about the peasants, the only people the peasants can trust is each other. “Unlike any other working and exploited class the peasantry has always supported itself and this has made it to some degree a class apart.” (Berger, 1978 p.346). The fact that the peasants have always been conscious of themselves as both producers and consumers of their own labour whose primary enemies have not just been the current ruling class (be that the bourgeoise or the industrial proletariat) who will extract their “surplus” before it is a surplus, but also both natural disaster but also the vagaries of war (ibid. p.347). It is this situation that in the ideological conflicts of the mid-20th century led the revolutionary elements of the European peasantry to cast their lot in with the Anarchist cause, rather than the Marxist communists. It was not until the emergence of Mao Tse-Tung that Marxism found a leader who could convince the peasantry of the value of communism. He did this by “embracing and enhancing, local tradition permitting rooted people to turn to the distant national leader into that saviour their legends, emotions and situations had long demanded.” (Friedman, 1976 p.120). Similarly, in Vietnam in the 1930s “the [Communist] party adopted the program of the peasantry not the other way around” – indicating that the peasantry could become a revolutionary political force, if convinced that the revolution would serve their interests (Scott, 1976 p.148). The supposed inward- and backward-looking peasant conservatism is not therefore to be confused with the conservatism of national chauvinism – though it is often exploited by it.

Peasant conservatism, within the context of peasant experience, has nothing in common with the conservatism of a privileged ruling class or the conservatism of a sycophantic petty-bourgeoisie. The first is an attempt, however vain, to make their privilege absolute; the second is a way of siding with the powerful in exchange for a little delegated power over the working classes. Peasant conservatism scarcely defends any privilege. Which is why, much to the surprise of urban political and social theorists, small peasants have so often rallied to the defence of richer peasants. It is the conservatism not of power but of meaning. It represents a depository (a granary) of meaning preserved from lives and generations threatened by continual and inexorable change. (Berger, 1978, pp.355-6)

This conservatism and indifference to the concerns that exist outside of those of communal survival is a vital mechanism for both the peasant’s security and their independence, the two being linking in the peasant’s mind. It tends to manifest as an accumulated knowledge – mētis – that is opaque to the external viewer and is therefore dismissed as reactionary or unscientific by progressive political theorists whose worldview is grounded in the (post)industrialised proletariat (Scott 1998 pp.324-5).

With Rozalski’s paintings we are therefore presented with a number of interlocking and potentially contradictory themes. Regardless of intention – there is unarguably a possibility that these paintings can be used to bolster nationalist rhetoric. Their science-fiction-ness is of a type that plays with dark authoritarian themes, and the peasants can be taken as unreconstructed symbols of nationhood. But I have argued that this straightforward reading is not necessarily the only one available and that the shepherds and reapers with their, by and large, indifference to the war can be viewed in the tradition of the peasant as distrustful of external forces and their disagreements. This argument fits in with a historical libertarian communist position that has been dismissed by orthodox Marxism – a dismissal that damages universalist pretentions of Marxism and makes the rural proletariat susceptible to conservative rhetoric.

***

Images:

ROZALSKI J., 1920 - The Youngest Sister. [viewed 8 April 2020]. Available from: https://jrozalski.com/projects/gJ39yQ

ROZALSKI J., 1920 - Kosciuszko Squadron. [viewed 8 April 2020]. Available from: https://jrozalski.com/projects/aYq8J

ROZALSKI J., 1920 - Harvest. [viewed 8 April 2020]. Available from: https://jrozalski.com/projects/lV92e

Bibliography:

BERGER J., 1978. Towards Understanding Peasant Experience. Race and Class, 19(4), 345-359

CARROLL M.D., 1987. Peasant Festivity and Political Identity in the Sixteen Century. Art History, 10(3), 289-302

CLARK T.J., 1973. Image of the People; Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution. London: Thames and Hudson

FRIEDMAN E., 1976. ‘The Peasant War in Germany’ by Friedrich Engels – 125 Years After. In: J. Bak. The German Peasant War of 1525, London: Frank Cass, pp. 89-135

GIBSON W., 2018. The Science in Science Fiction [viewed 4 April 2020]. Available from: https://www.npr.org/2018/10/22/1067220/the-science-in-science-fiction?t=1586007308697

GREEN C., 2017. How Highlanders Came to Wear Kilts. In: Jstor Daily. 25 December 2017 [viewed 4 April 2020]. Available from: https://daily.jstor.org/how-scottish-highlanders-came-to-wear-kilts/

MOORCOCK M., 1978. Epic Pooh [viewed 4 April 2020]. Available from https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/en361fantastika/bibliography/2.7moorcock_m.1978epic_pooh.pdf

ORTON F. and G. POLLOCK, 1980. Les Donneés Bretonnantes: La Prairie De Répresentation. Art History, 3(3), 314-346

RANCIÈRE J., 2004. The Politics of Aesthetics. London: Continuum

ROZALSKI J., Jakub Rozalski; howling at the moon. [viewed 8 April 2020] Available from https://jrozalski.com

RUBLACK U., 2010. Dressing Up; Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press

SCOTT J.C., 1976. The Moral Economy of the Peasant, New Haven: Yale University Press

SCOTT J.C., 1998. Seeing Like a State, New Haven: Yale University Press

SHEKHOVTSOV A., 2009. Apoliteic music: Neo-Folk, Martial Industrial and “metapolitical fascism”. Patterns of Prejudice, 43(5), 431-457

TIMBERLAKE J., 2018. Landscape and the Science Fiction Imaginary. Bristol: Intellect

TYMIŃSKI M. and P. KORYŚ, 2015. An Escape from Backwardness? The Polish Transformation as a Modernization Project. The Central European Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, volume 75

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aleapoffaithfiction · 5 years

Text

VIII.

“And you? You my destiny.” - Shyne

“More wine Mr. Marshall?”

Whether you’re from New York City or not, we’ve all in some way, shape, or manner ogled over the renowned skyline and created our own fantasies of everything that it is supposed to represent. Whether we’ve fed into the brutalizing gangster narrative painted in The Godfather or tried to figure out life and love along with the famous four in Sex and The City, it’s meaningful and will always represent either a new beginning or the backdrop of your wildest journeys and dreams. Tonight, as I’m in the midst of its beauty, it’s serving as a testament to either a potential new beginning or a distaste of some sort. I’ve been too focused on the soothing waves lightly rolling along the Hudson River and the patrons dinning around me to be able to figure out which predicament I’m actually in.

“Bring the bottle.” As my lips curved, my eyes panned over to the barely touched glass on my side of the table and they eventually landed on him. I’m assuming that was supposed to impress me and it might of if we were a bit more acquainted with one another. I’ve never been cozy with overindulging with any type of alcoholic beverages while on a date, because I need to be of sound, mind, and body in order to properly comprehend body language and most of all, the dialog between myself and the person I’ve chosen to go out with. Even with this so-called history that Quinton believes we have with one another, I still don’t trust him enough to expose my comfort zone with him. He’s not Taylor.

The River Café. It’s uniquely right under the Brooklyn Bridge and literally over the river. I’ve heard more than enough people rave about it for it to be in contention as one of the elite restaurants in borough and there’s no hiding the reality that it is also one of the most expensive places to have a bite to eat. Its romantic ambiance sets the mood with the dim lighting and panoramic views but in my opinion Dom Salvador, the Brazilian samba funk innovator, is the true main attraction. I’ve found myself nodding my head and occasionally snapping my fingers along to many of the tunes the celebrated pianist played since we’ve arrived. Quinton deserves credit for taking my stomping ground suggestion into consideration. Being in Brooklyn is a reminder of where we’ve come from, but sitting in this stunning restaurant in the heart of Dumbo, is a testament of how far we’ve come. Touché.

“How is your fish?” I chose the black sea bass as my main course. There was something about it being sautéed with lobster brown butter that attracted me to it over everything else. It was served with grilled artichoke ravioli and fresh artichoke. It’s pretty good, I can admit. The gnocchi I had for an appetizer may have been slightly better, but I’m not complaining. Quinton began his dining experience with an ounce of caviar that immediately cost him a hundred and eighty bucks. Caviar tastes like shit, so I wanted no parts of that.

“It’s really good. I’m enjoying it. And your steak?”

“It’s decent. I’ve had better.” I didn’t expect him to show up in a suit, but he did, in politician blue. In that field, your head can never leave the game. Who’s to say that he won’t run into some multimillionaire that he may need some campaign contributions from or maybe he’ll shake hands and kiss babies with a few supporters before we call it a night.

“Have you eaten here before?”

“Once before. It was a business dinner.”

“It’s my first time here. I’ve heard about it, but I never kept it in the back of my mind to come. I’m impressed for the most part. The location is literally perfect.” That it is. I can even say hello to our France gifted Statue of Liberty from here.

“It is right?”

“Absolutely.”

“So, let me ask you this. Why sports?”

“Why not sports? Don’t get me wrong, the sports industry within itself has a lot of bullshit within it but what industry doesn’t? You just have to learn how to move amongst the vultures. Overall, I don’t think a lot people realize how sports are one of the primary aspects of life that brings people together. When you step into those arenas, stadiums, or fields, you see people of all ethnic backgrounds sitting together, uniformly, and basking in the moment. Sports drive our emotions, serve as our conversation starters and endings, are reasons for our road trips, and bring tradition within our families. They began lifelong friendships, cure pain, and have served as a shift within this country and many others for centuries. I fell in love with them. They’re what thrilled me ever since I was a child and I had a parent who advocated for that.” I’ve gotten that question a lot; sometimes in a sexiest manner and on occasion, out of genuine interest. I’d like to think it’s what I was meant to do. I have a high regard for our nation’s doctors, lawyers, business people, artists, and everything else, but I’ve never had a passion to be anything else other than who and what I am right now.

“I don’t know. I’ve always thought you’d end up being an actress or some type of model.” Should I be insulted by that? I don’t know. “Why?”

“Of course, you’re beautiful, but you’ve also always been great at speaking and being expressive.”

“So, then we can attribute that as to why I’m so good at my job now. Why politics?”

“It wasn’t always my passion. Initially, I wanted to be a forensic scientist. Well, now that I think about it, I guess I always wanted to be involved with the justice process in some aspect. I’d like to think that’s what politics is but just in a much grander fashion.”

“Justice? So that’s all you’re in it for? The justice aspect of things?” I find that hard to believe. Sure, politicians have power but, in my opinion, it’s typically for all of the wrong reasons when it comes to most of them. I’ll give credit when it is due to those who actually do bring about the shifts in culture, growth, and renewal that they speak of but other than that, I’ve never been drawn to anything about it. I’m no American flag waving, super patriotic chick. Most would say I’m living the modernized American dream since I have no husband or children within my home seemingly by choice, but what the hell is the American dream anyway? What makes it the ultimate goal?

“I’d be liar if I said that is the only thing on my mind. I do want to make a difference, but not only within this city, but also within this country. For me, that’s a duty much like it is for a military officer who willingly signs up to protect and serve, but politics comes with networking unlike any other and that’s the type of networking that I need so that I can continue to take not only myself but also my businesses to new horizons.”

“I see.”

“You sound displeased.” His soft chuckle followed the sound of his fork hitting the plate. He then took a sip of his wine and leaned in to get a better glimpse at my facial expression.

“I’m not displeased. I can’t or won’t knock your hustle.”

“My hustle?”

“Everyone has a hustle.”

“This is true. I haven’t heard that word in quite a while but we know it well, being from here and all. Let me ask you this about your hustle Sarai. We all know and see how well you’ve done for yourself. We’ve applauded it and continue to do so. But is that it? All that you want to do with that powerful voice of yours is use it for sports? You only want to lend your voice to analyze, occasionally critique, and celebrate a bunch of pompous athletes who will never do the same for you in return?” This man has a lot of nerve.

“I lend my voice to what moves the world no matter what is going on. As I said, sports are a vital part of the culture of not only this country, but the entire world. People turn on their televisions every day, tune in through mobile devices, tablets, and whatever the hell else, just to be able to hear what I have to say. Those pompous athletes you speak of approach me whenever they’re able to catch me out somewhere and they either thank me or humbly admit they can understand why I critiqued something they did. I have no problem lending my voice to them, because they’re ordinary people with once in a lifetime talent, who live their lives under microscopes of misjudgment and scrutiny. As a politician, shouldn’t you understand that? Aren’t you supposed to be a voice for the people?”

“Yes, for the people.”

“And they’re people just like anyone else is.”

“I see bigger things for you. I always have. Why do you think I’ve been so adamant about us having a moment like this? It’s not only because I’ve always been attracted to you and interesting in having something more, but also because I want you with me during this journey. I believe that we can really get out there and make a real difference within this world. The Obamas were just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to black faces like ours being in positions of power. I don’t want what Barack accomplished to be a one and done because that’s what these white motherfuckers are working their hardest to make sure of. No one’s pushing back enough as far as I’m concerned but I’m going to be the one to do so.”

“You just said that you saw me becoming an actress or a model and now all of a sudden, I’m Michelle Obama’s successor? That’s funny. Ultimately, I’d like to believe we’re both already making a difference. No?”

“We are, but we’re just in the early stages of it. We’re still gold fish in a world full of sharks. You want to get ahead in this world? Not only do you have to be a shark too, but in our case, we have to be the sharpest ones because we don’t get to slide by with mediocrity like the others do.”

“I agree with that in some aspects.”

“Sarai, I don’t want to do this alone and this country prides itself on the foundation of family. I need a family. I can’t continue running for these higher offices without a wife by my side and eventually, a couple of children too.”

“You just said Sarai I don’t want to do this alone, and then you went on to explain all of the political reasons why you need me. What am I supposed to be? A prop? I’m not into politics. I’m a Democrat by default and it’s only because it’s the lesser of two evils. That’s all I have in that department and as far as I’m concerned, I’m fine with it. In addition to that, is that what our foundation is supposed to be? You’d be sliding a ring on my finger, when? Tonight? Next week? Maybe a month or two from now? And it’ll all be for the sake of you continuing to catapult your political career? Excuse my French, but you must be out of your fucking mind Quinton.” The octaves within our voices hadn’t shifted whatsoever and if anyone were closely observing us, you’d think we were two people gleefully enjoying one another over a candlelit dinner and yet the reality is, propositions are being laid out on the table and underhanded insults were being slipped in somewhere in between them.

“Your mother said you would say that.”

“My mother? You spoke with my mother about this? Oh yeah, you are the idiot that I’ve always thought you were.”

“An idiot? So, you’re calling me an idiot for having yearned for you for all of these years while you deliberately ignored me? I’m an idiot for ignoring the advances of women of many different statures all for the sake of having Sarai Nazaire, the around the way girl, as my wife?” I nearly spit out the wine swirling around in my mouth onto the table in response to the manner in which he said my name. He’d said it like I was some damsel in distress who needed his rescuing.

“Are you blaming me for decisions that you made on your own accord? You chose to ignore those women. You could have done whatever you liked. Also, I wasn’t ignoring you. I had a lot going on and I wasn’t in a place to nurture a relationship.”

“But you were in enough of a place to be with Shamel?”

“I didn’t do much nurturing of that.” And neither did he. I tried. If no one will give me credit for it, I certainly will give it to myself. I tried to be a lot of things for that man but from his perspective I came up short in every category. There wasn’t a single aspect of me that he believed to be more than or even just enough for him.

“And even with our history, there isn’t anything about you and I that makes sense?”

“What history? Are you speaking of our friendship or the one time we slept together? I hope for the sake of us walking away from this table with somewhat of a decent connection to one another, that you’re speaking about our friendship.”

“I’m speaking about everything; everything that happened and everything that you resisted. You’ve never given me a chance.”

“What do you think I’m doing right now? Why do you think I’m sitting here? I’m trying to give you a chance and yet you’re sitting there propositioning me instead of courting me. Am I supposed to be flattered?”

“I am courting you. I want to court you. I’m not trying to jump into all of this as quickly as you assume. I’m simply letting you know my intentions. I don’t want to date you just for the sake of dating. I want us to work towards having a future together.”

“How can I feel good about hearing something like that when I know that it comes with a motive?” If he and I were to choose to move forward after this date tonight, I’d know that there may possibly be only a small portion of our union that has some authenticity to it.

I’ve never considered myself to be the hopeless romantic type of woman who idly sits around waiting for my prince charming to show up at my door in shining armor and sweep me off of my feet. I don’t even know what I want or need out of love. Far more than anything else, I believe that aspect of life is the most complex and it doesn’t seem to have the patience for me, and that’s alright I suppose because the feeling is sort of mutual.

Even in admitting that, I can’t fake it until we make it with Quinton. I’m not capable of smiling until my cheeks feel like they’re going to shatter, while I pageant wave at crowds of people as a figure within his enormous shadow. We’d eventually become something more corrupt than Watergate and more scandalous than Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. We’d unravel in a manner that this country has never seen a First Couple ever do before. He’s barely tolerating my resistance now, so imagine the reaction he’d have to it once his ego is unbearably and uncontrollably colossal.

“With the places that we’re at within our lives, everyone who we encounter that shows interest will have some sort of a motive.” I, too, have had thoughts that mirrored his. I’ve observed women toss out all of their integrity for a chance encounter with someone prominent and affluent enough to raise their stature within society.

I’ve had men offer to buy me a drink at bars just to be able to speak about their glory days as a high school athlete while noticeably slipping in desires that they believe I can help them with. There are family members who I’ve probably only spoken to once or twice since my birth who have given odd interviews to tabloids for a few bucks about aspects of my life they know nothing about. So, while his statement holds its truths, how can I ever live comfortably if I believe anyone who I encounter has it out for me?

“Well Mr. Politician, let that be so. I won’t applaud you because you’ve made your motive known, but I will politely decline your offer. You’re not a bad guy Quinton. You’re just not my guy. I don’t know who that is or where he’ll come from, but I’d rather wait a lifetime for a man that I’m going to actually have undeniable chemistry with rather than force something for the sake of political bliss. You’re asking me to sacrifice everything about who I am and what I stand for, for you. I’d never ask that of you or anyone else. As you said, there are women out here who would love to be on your arm. Stop turning them down and open yourself up to finding the one for you. Do that for yourself, because this is a cold world and I’d hate for you to have to lay next to someone at night who you don’t even love because you want to sit in the highest office in this country. It’s not worth it, at least for me it isn’t.”

While staring at him, I raised my arm to move one of my tight curls out of my face. Suddenly, my lips rose into a grin that quickly erupted into a giggle. The morning I woke up against Beckham’s chiseled chest with his arms tightly wrapped around my body, he joked about my hair being in his mouth at one point while we slept. As we lay there, he switched my name during every sentence that spilled from his rose toned lips. I was Diana Ross, Donna Summers, and Chaka Khan. He even joked that if I’m going to keep my hair like this, then I’d have to put on one of those bonnets that black mothers wear outside to embarrass their kids. I hadn’t laughed so hard since the last time we were together. It seems like all of my laughter comes from him being around him these days.

“You’ve made your choice. I guess I have to live with that.” He grabbed the bottle of wine off of the table and refilled his glass to the edges of the brim. He then tightly gulped it down while my eyes washed over the motion of his Adam’s apple. The tension radiating from his frame snatched what was left of my appetite. We certainly don’t have to bother with dessert.

“You’ll be living with a choice that’s what’s best for both you and I. You don’t want me. I’m sure if I allowed it, you’d climb into bed with me tonight, but anything more? It’s not realistic. I’ve never felt wanted by you and you’ve never felt that from me. We both deserve more. If you don’t believe so, then I do. I deserve someone who looks at me like I was born to be his. I’d prefer to be with a man who indisputably wants me and only me.”

“Well I hope you find that, Sarai.”

“I’m not looking for it. If it comes my way, then that’s amazing. If not, I’ll be alright.”

Silence fell between us and once again, my eyes were gazing out at the striking scenery surrounding the restaurant. As fucked up as it sounds, this would have been a beyond perfect date if that unknown man that I speak of were sitting across from me tonight. Instead of tension, there’d be flirtatious giggles and glances of affection. My heel clad feet would be intentionally grazing against his calves to entice him just as much as he’d be doing to me simply by existing.

While speaking, my ears would be listening to anything he chose to say while my eyes would be reading the clear message of him having every intention to have me gripping the sheets and crying out his name in our bedroom, within his. Not being able to take it anyone, we’d call for the check with half eaten plates in front of us and would waltz off into the night with a care or concern about anything or anyone other than one another. In a perfect world, that’s how things would be, but this world isn’t perfect and neither am I.

“Check please.” I guess he wants to get out of here just as bad as I do.

“Quinton, I’m going to go. I can cover this if you’d like.” I ruined his night. It’s the least that I can do, right?

“There’s no need for you to do that. You’re here by the way of my invitation. I have it under control. Enjoy the rest of your night.” Everything about his tone reeked of dismissiveness and yet I’m unbothered. I get it.

“I’ll see you around, okay? We usually catch one another at church from time to time.”

“I suppose so.”

Upon my arrival to the restaurant, we greeted one another with a huge hug and yet as I’m making my exit a few minutes short of an hour and a half later, I can feel his cold glare following my every move. I insisted that we meet here instead of allowing him to come and pick me up from my place. I’m not comfortable with too many people knowing where I rest my head at night. I know him well enough to know he’d surprisingly pop up at my door and that would easily leave a bad taste in my mouth, so I saved him the future embarrassment and myself the annoyance. With the way this evening ended, my driving here was clearly God being on my side.

Though the night was barely young, boredom coerced me into cruising around Brooklyn for the hell of it. It was my favorite past time in my hooptie Honda Civic during those summers when I’d be on break from college and had time to spare after putting in the necessary hours for whatever internship I was working for that particular summer. There’s something about it that makes me feel close to my father. I’d turn corners on familiar blocks and those great memories of the two of us taking this borough by a storm would come to the forefront of my thoughts. I’d remember the conversations we’d have with him endlessly dropping knowledge for me to carry with me on life’s journeys and the constant words of reassurance so that I’d always know how proud of me he was. We’d playfully debate about who is greater between Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, why the Fresh Prince of Bel Air is better than the Cosby Show, and why Allen Iverson will never be my husband. In his neighborly manner, he’d speak to everyone sitting out on their porches and would even buy ice cream for whatever kids were outside if the Mister Softie truck was around. Though my mother would scold him for spending so carelessly, he did it anyway.

It’s cold now. The sidewalks don’t have girls jumping double-dutch, boys aren’t riding by on their bikes, nor are people sitting out on their porches scoping the scene and gossiping about what’s hot on the block. Those memories aren’t coming to me either. Instead, my mind is consumed with something or rather someone else. It’s funny how that works; do you call it a crush or infatuation? Interest or just simple attraction? I don’t know how to define it but this is the first time I’m learning just how out of control our emotions can be.

On the surface, you can put on a performance like you have it all together and absolutely nothing can faze you, but internally? There’s this train wreck on an endless loop. This doesn’t feel like a train wreck though. Instead, there are flutters within the core of my body. Chills trickle up my arms and onto the napes of my neck, and trigger goosebumps that linger around enough to unnerve me. My toes curl, chest tightens, and taking breaths becomes a task to focus on. My duties and concerns for those beyond myself now includes an additional person. How has it come to a point of me not wanting to fail him? How did I get here?

I don’t know how to navigate any of this. I’m a small fish taken out of a pond and thrown into an ocean of the unknown. What now? Do a swim and explore what may be one of the most beautiful experiences of my life? Do I stay right there in the one place I landed and resist learning or exploring everything out of fear? Do I hopelessly swim and end up getting viciously eaten up by something that is beyond me? Shamel was easy, frustrating as fuck, but easy nonetheless. Easy became toxic but in the midst of that, I never had to think this much. We just co-existed. I fear the expectations. I may not live up to the fantasy style of hype that circulates about me.

Just as Quinton had mentioned, I’m the cool around the way girl who can carry a conversation with the dudes probably even better than I can with the chicks. I’ve seen men on social media deem me to be the type of wife who can make the platter of hot wings and then come and flop down on the couch to watch the NBA Finals with my man. It’s possible, but I’m so much more than that. I have my baggage and bullshit with me too. Is that okay? When the make-up is off, my hair is up in the sloppiest ponytail ever, and a t-shirt three times my size with some socks and Nike slippers are covering my body, will I still be the fantasy? When I’m nagging about something that’s irritating me, having one of those days when I don’t want to be bothered with anyone or anything, or having some sort of a mood swing because Mother Nature is running her monthly course, will everything still be all good? I don’t know.

“Oh, fuck you Fantasia. Fuck you.” I’d been letting Apple Music do its thing by allowing my own playlists to flourish while I drive. Having the formatting on shuffle made the transition from Biggie’s “I Got A Story to Tell” to Fantasia’s “When I See You” completely catch me off guard. I’d quickly gone from being lost in my thoughts to listening to Fantasia sing them.

“Screw that.”

I switched to a playlist filled with the Best of The Bad Boy Records Era. I kept the sappy and moody vibe, with just the right amount of Hip-Hop added in for the drive back into Jersey. I saw my home in my rearview mirror as I slowly drove past it. Though I should have parked in my garage and called it a night, my hands remained attached to the steering wheel and my foot pressed on the gas to continue the journey to the person and place invading and conquering my every thought. In one of our many conversations we’ve had, we discussed how many cars he owns and all three of them were very much parked in their usual spots, but the additional cars were a warning that he had company in the house. Somehow, in the back of my mind, I knew that he did, and yet I’ve come here anyway.

I remained unnoticeably parked in his cobblestone driveway for minutes in an attempt to gather my thoughts. It feels like I’m the one who’s pursuing him nowadays. I’m the one in an odd chase.

Hey. Are you busy?

Seconds later, the bubble appeared at the bottom of the screen.

No. What’s up?

I’m not sure what vibe he’s giving. There’s something about that reply that seems short or rather standoffish.

I’m in your driveway.

And looking desperate as hell while at it.

Come in the house. I’ll have someone unlock the door.

I’d be uncomfortable and fearful of what could or would go behind the walls of his home. One innocent slip up with the wrong person could easily cause a world of trouble for me more so than him.

You think maybe you can come outside?

What am I thinking? The man is on crutches. That wouldn’t be fair.

Never mind. I know you have company and I don’t want to disrupt. I’ll just come by tomorrow.

It’s what I should have done in the first place.

Give me five minutes. I’ll come outside.

It was less than five minutes. Despite the crisp cold air, he crutched himself out of the door in a pair of Nike shorts and a hoodie. There was one Virgil Abloh designed Jordan I on his one foot and of course his protective boot on the other. I suppose the beanie hat covering his blonde curls is what is supposed to serve as his protective barrier from the chill. Once he opened up the passenger side door, he tossed his crutches into the back, and carefully slid into the front seat. For the sake of comforting his ankle, he used the side panel on the bottom of the seat to adjust it further back from the normal position it’s usually in.

“Sarai. What’s up?” He finally closed the door and I couldn’t be any more thankful. The fall air was beginning to win against the low heat I had going in the car.

“Nothing major. How are you?” His large hands reached up to readjust his hat as he responded with a shrug.

“Chillin’. Nothing major for me either. I went back home to Louisiana for a couple of days. That was cool.”

“That’s good. I’m sure it was good to get a change of scenery since the injury has had you so cooped up in the house.”

“Yeah, it was a nice little visit. I got to kick it with my brothers and my sister. We even did a family dinner and both my momma and my pops were there. That shit rarely happens these days, so, I’m pleased with how it all turned out.”  “Did you visit LSU?”

“Not this time. I’m going to visit later on in the month. I’m designing an exclusive Air Force I with Nike and I plan on giving the whole team pairs. So, while I’m down there, I’ll probably kick it at a game.”

“That’s dope. I’m sure they’re going to appreciate that coming from you. Not only are you a hometown hero, but you’ve certainly cemented your legendary status within the LSU history books.”

“For sure. I care about giving back but in this case, I definitely care about inspiring those boys to know that I haven’t done anything that they aren’t capable of achieving.” His humbling spirit is a major part of the foundation that draws me to him. It exudes itself during any conversation he’s having.

“That’s real.”

For the first time since he sat inside of the car, our eyes met and he slowly panned his own down to assess every aspect of my frame. His lips flattened as he tightly pressed them together and with a slight nod, he turned his head forward just as it had been before.

“How was the date?”

Breathless; it’s how he left me. I opened my mouth to speak and whatever words I thought I mustered up to tell him instantly fell flat.

“You’re not wearing a dress like that to church.”

“It was thought provoking and extremely disappointing.”

“And that’s why you’re here?”

“No.”

“Then why are you here? Let me correct that before you assume. I’m not bothered by your presence. I’m anything but that. You’re just confusing. I spend a lot of time trying to figure you out and I feel like I understand some areas and I come up short in others. I’m just wondering if you’re here because things went badly with him.”

“I’m not here because of that. I already knew how things would go with him before I even went but I needed to, because he’s been in this weird state of limbo and has been filled with hope for years and I needed to know why. Now I know.”

“And that’s all it was?”

“That’s it.” It’s been years since I explained myself to a man. Shamel and I ended damn near four years ago and I despised explaining myself to him because I was made out to be a liar no matter what I said.

“So, you’re here now. Now what? We talk and you run depending upon the way the conversation goes? Or is this the official moment when you friend zone me?”

“Odell, I’m not friend zoning you.” A huff escaped my lips as my fingers trailed from the top of my head and through the curls cascading over my shoulders.

I couldn’t bear to look after him after blurting out what I’d been so afraid to say. Early on, I attempted to keep him as nothing more than a random figment within the professional realm of my life. That failed. I then chose to view him as an acquaintance I run into from time to time and that flopped before I could put it to the test. After spending all of those days in the hospital, the friend zone felt appropriate and as if it could be a success between he and I, but I’d been telling my mind a disastrous lie that my emotions refused to adapt to.

“I just don’t know how any of this works. You say I’m confusing and I can be, but this is just as confusing.” I motioned between he and myself for emphasis.

“Well let’s figure it out.” The intensity of his glare silenced the mental clutter. The tone of his voice created a safe and comfort zone unlike any other.

The warmth of his palm met the top of my hand and I instantly flipped it over so our palms could meet. Our fingers laced, interlocking everything we weren’t saying and sealing a deal we’d yet to make.

As the faint music played, the clock grabbed my attention.

“I have something for you.”

“You have something for me? Like what?” His lips curved into that all too familiar smirk of his and his eyes blissfully gleamed. Rather than saying it, I exited the car and quickly made my way to the trunk. I’d been riding around with the box and garment bag in there for over a week and now I can finally cure my anxiousness.

“What’s that?” Again, I didn’t say anything as I leaned in from my side and passed them over so he’d be able to place them on his lap.

“Open the box first.” Once I closed the door, I turned the heat up just a notch more. I didn’t think fall would be hitting this hard. Usually the weather is all over the place, but this year, that shit seems to be no joke. We’re going to be brutalized with snow at the rate things are going.

“Okay.” Like a kid on Christmas, he rubbed his hands together in glee and quickly lifted the lid off. In an instant, he erupted into a booming fit of laughter. I had to join him, because it was so infectious.

I have decent friendship with Angelo Baque, who is more the former brand director of Supreme. We met two years ago at New York Fashion Week and we’ve remained in touch ever since. He even had me model in an ad campaign for the brand last year that was plastered all over New York City in anticipation for fashion week. So, though his Supreme days are behind him, it doesn’t mean that he isn’t in good standing with the brand. It ended up being fairly easy to have a custom Supreme x Louis Vuitton printed walking boot created for Odell.

“Sarai. This is fire.” He closely examined it with bits of giggles that eventually turned into laughter once again. It amused me just as much when I picked it up. It’s fashionably loud and just as gaudy as he can be sometimes. If he’s going to have to wear a big ol’ medical boot, why not make it something representative of himself?

“You like it?”

“Hell yeah. This is perfect. You already know that I sometimes get frustrated as hell when I look down at that boot and you just fixed that problem.”

“I know. That’s why I got it.”

“I love it. I love it so much.”

“I know you have so much of the collection in your possession already because I’ve seen it on your Instagram, but you don’t have this. It’s a sample piece that never made it into the collection. I asked your mom for your size and by a miracle, one of the two jackets of its kind can fit you.” I held the box to make it easier for him to unzip the garment bag and he pulled out the vivid red bomber style of jacket. Everything about it screamed his name when I laid my eyes on it and I had to have it for him, no matter what the price tag was for it. Luckily, it wasn’t as overly hefty as I thought it would be. It’s the perfect piece to pair with the walking boot. Just because he’s injured, doesn’t mean that he can’t be as on point as he usually is when he’s out and about.

“And I thought I had connects. Whew! This is crazy. And it’s a one of one? At least for me it is. I’ma have to stunt with this one. It’s only right.”

“I know a few people.”

“Shit, a few more than me. Sarai, this is amazing. You got me cheesing like a kid on Christmas right now.”

“I know.”

“Oh, so you know me huh?” Why did he have to bite his lip after such a question? My backside shifted in the seat as my thighs pressed together much tighter than they already were.

“I know some things.”

“I want you to know everything.” Our hands met again as I reached to turn the heat off. I didn’t need it anymore.

In an attempt to mask the fluttering radiating throughout my body, I slid further down into the seat.

“I’d like that.”

My eyes panned over to the clock once again. Just as I did, midnight was finally upon us.

“Happy Birthday Odell.”

All week long, I’d been contemplating how I’d go about acknowledging him on his day. I didn’t want it to be the typical call or an impersonal text message. It certainly wasn’t going to be some social media post with a long heartfelt caption like I’m sure he’s going to receive from many throughout the day. Since I’d be bearing gifts, I knew it needed to be done here, but the exact timeframe was a silent debate. Finally, I settled on coming right around this time.

“Thank you, baby.”

Like he’d been doing since he was finally able to trap me into his world at the Bleacher Report party, he leaned over to invade my space. As my head turned, his plush lips brushed mine in a fiery passion and demand. He took possession of all seven of my senses and shifted us into a place where only he and I exist. The warmth of his minty breath rid our space of any bit of cool air trickling into the car.

“Sarai.” He huskily whispered my name; savoring every syllable as if he’d never heard anything more beautiful. Our breaths mingled as his lips pressed into mine.

I would have thought after all of the footage I’ve watched, all of pictures I’ve looked over, and all of the time we’ve spent speaking that I’d know quite a bit about his lips because they’re certainly my favorite part of him to look at thus far, but absolutely nothing could prepare me for this. Nothing.

His tongue sensually brushed over both of my lips in a plea for entry and I granted it. The warmth of his tongue grazed mine and his arm wrapped around my waist and drew me closer in a ravenousness that could not be ignored. He awoken parts of me that have been ignored for nearly four years. I yearned for a type of touch that I haven’t been able to properly satisfy through my own store-bought measures. I’ve laid awake at night wondering how his kiss would feel and as he sucking on my bottom lip in a tease that is sure to send me to an early grave, my wonder didn’t have a chance of measuring up to what I’m feeling right now.

“Take me home with you.” My heart thrashed against my chest as I pulled my quivering bottom lip in-between my teeth. Dear, God.

“Not for anything more than just me spending time with you. That’s it.”

“You have company in your house. You can’t leave them.”

“Yes, I can and I am. Drive.” It wasn’t a request but rather an order.

He settled back into the seat and boldly pulled the passenger side seatbelt over his body and properly secured it. For the sake of my own comfort, he removed the box from my lap and placed it back onto his.

I gazed into his tempting dark chocolate eyes for just a minute to see if he’d change his mind, but he sat patiently waiting for me to make my move and so I did.

I slowly pulled around his driveway and drove off into the night.

#odell beckham jr fanfic #odell beckham fanfic #fanfiction #fan fiction #fanfic #fan fic

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harryandmeghansussex · 6 years

Text

Harry's incredible Invictus Closing Ceremony Speech.

"Hi Guys. As always when these Games close, I would like to start by saying thank you.

To PK and Lieutenant General Peter Lay and the whole Sydney 2018 team - the vision and hard work has paid off and you have put on a truly magnificent Invictus Games.

Thank you for being our partners over the last couple of years, and our team at the Invictus Games Foundation, especially Dominic Reid and Rose Hall, for their tireless efforts and hard work.

To the people of Australia who filled the stands and cheered on the sidelines - thank you so much. Your energy powered our competitors all week and you made these Games your own by creating a typically Aussie atmosphere.

To the friends and families who got our competitors to the start line and applauded them all the way to the finish line, thank you. You are all part of one big Invictus family and none of us would be here without you.

And to the competitors goes the biggest thanks of all. You have once again left us humbled and inspired by your example, by your determination, by your service and by your sense of humour.

Last Saturday, I spoke about how you were part of the Invictus generation. Your choice to serve your nations places you alongside those storied generations that have come before you, that fought two world wars and then secured a world order built on freedom, democracy, and tolerance.

And of course this choice to serve - this choice to put yourselves at risk for the benefit of others - is at the very heart of what I founded these Invictus Games to celebrate. I wanted your service to be recognised.

But what we saw again this week is that Invictus is so much more. Your example goes beyond the military community. It is about more than just your inspiring stories of recovery from injury and illness.

It is about your example of determination, of optimism, of strength, honour and friendship, or as the Aussies call it 'mateship', as a core value that has the power to inspire the world.

When we saw Paul Guest and Edwin Vermetten support each other through Paul's struggle with Post Traumatic Stress on the tennis court in front of a large audience, we saw what mateship really looks like.

When Jakub Tynka fought through excruciating leg pain for the final 20 minutes of his cycling event, and let the cheering crowd and his fellow competitors Benjamin and Cedric push him over the finish line, we saw the definition of strength.

When you saw Hannah Stolberg crossing the finish line on a bike which belonged to a late fellow serviceman whose values she strives to emulate, you witnessed the real meaning of honour. And, when 67-year old former military nurse Cavell Simmonds decided age was just a number and entered into five sports at her first Invictus Games, you saw what determination really looks like.

These men and women are role models. They are who every child should look up to. In a world where negativity is given too much of a platform, our Invictus competitors - many of whom have been given a second chance at life - are achieving extraordinary things.

Now, a lot of exciting labels get attached to the guys and girls who compete in these Games. They get called heroes. They're tagged as legends. They're referred to as superhumans. Now of course all those things are true! Right?

Well I believe, that the real power of their example is that they are not superheroes. [Sorry to break it to you guys!]

Because as you have witnessed this past week, what they are achieving isn't impossible nor is it magical. You have seen it happen before your very eyes because these competitors have made it happen.

They are men and women who have confronted a challenge and overcome it. They are ordinary people doing extraordinary things. And with the help of their friends and families, they have exceeded every expectation.

That is something we can all aspire to. You do not have to be a veteran who has fought back from injury to be inspired by the Invictus example.

You can be a teacher or a doctor, a mum or a dad, a child or a grandparent, a farmer, a plumber, a lawyer, or a CEO. Or anything at all.

You can identify something in your own life that you want to change for the better. And you can let the men and women of the Invictus Games remind you that no challenge is too difficult to overcome.

Nowhere is that truer than in the area of mental health. By simply being here and fighting back from some of the darkest experiences known to anyone, you have become role models for everyone at home or in the stands who might be struggling with their emotions or with a mental illness.

For that friend or comrade you know who is unable to open up about their struggles. For that man or woman who has watched on television, you are proving that it's OK to talk about how we feel.

To girls and boys who see you speaking openly about anxiety, stress, and depression, you are showing it's OK not to be OK. And most importantly, you are showing us all that it's OK to ask for help. Asking for help is courageous. It will improve your life and the lives of those around you immeasurably. In the moment you admit that you are struggling, you take that first step towards a better future for you and your friends and your family.

You allow those around you to show you the love and concern that is central to the cure.

I've been there, you've been there, and we now need to reach out to those who can never even imagine themselves in that place.

I hope the ethos of these Games has also shown you that we all have mental health, just as much as we all have physical health. I hope you have seen that our mental fitness is even more important than our physical fitness, because without it, we cannot survive, let alone thrive.

So for all the civvies, or civilians out there, look at what these men and women have achieved and know that one day, though you may not be injured in combat, physical or emotional injuries can happen to any one of us, on any given day.

The secret of these Invictus Games is not really about the amazing medical science that has saved the lives of our competitors and helped many of them to walk, swim, or move again.

The secret to the success of these Games has been accepting that mental health is the real key to recovery. Our competitors have helped turn the issue of mental health from a sad story to an inspiring one. They want to live, rather than just be alive.

When you accept a challenge is real, you can have hope. When you understand your vulnerability, you can become strong. When you are brave enough to ask for help, you can be lifted up. You can start living, doing, feeling - not simply surviving.

And when you share your story, you can change the world. And I can't think of a better way to continue serving your country.

I am so proud to call you my friends and my Invictus family. You are the Invictus generation and you are showing us all that anything is possible.

Thank you to everyone for an amazing Sydney Games - we'll see you in the Netherlands in 2020!"

#prince harry #duke of sussex #⭐ invictus #⭐ invictus games #invictus sydney #sussexdownunder

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phoenixmayorcandidates-blog · 6 years

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Mayor of Phoenix & Family

As he forges ahead in an effort to become the first Ahwatukee resident to be elected the mayor of Phoenix, Moses Sanchez has made City Hall’s unresponsiveness to families and neighborhoods a big part of his campaign.

That’s not hard to understand.

Family and neighborhoods have comprised a major part of life for the 41-year-old father of three.

His youngest daughter is his business partner. His oldest daughter lives next door. He brags how his son is probably one of the few people in the nation to have had his father not only present him with his high school diploma at graduation but sign it, too.

He credits his kids and physician wife with helping him readjust to civilian life after the E-6 noncommissioned officer took part in counterinsurgency operations in war-torn Afghanistan as part of his duties in the Navy Reserve.

He is a member of the Ahwatukee Kiwanis Club and was its president for four years running. He worked on the Kyrene K-8 Committee for a number of years. He was a member of the Tempe Union High School District Governing Board. He’s coached school soccer and volleyball teams.

In other words, family and service are all over Sanchez’s resume.

And those two interests explain why Sanchez is running for mayor: He says it’s time City Hall pays families and neighborhoods more than lip service.

“I think it’s time we have someone who represents Phoenix families,” he said in an interview with AFN. “City Hall has done a real great job fighting – for City Hall. There’s a real disconnect between City Hall and the rest of us.”

“Most of the Phoenix families I’ve talked to feel the same way. It’s about time we have an outsider with a different perspective,” he added. “It’s about time we have someone who fights for the community. We haven’t had a mayor who came from outside City Hall in 34 years.”

The way this year’s mayoral race is shaping up illustrates the point stressed by Sanchez, a Republican in the nonpartisan election. He likely will be running in a three-way primary runoff with two longtime City Council members in August, leading to a two-way race in November.

A grateful immigrant

When he was 5, he and his family moved to the U.S. from Panama.

Even before he began a 25-year stint with the Navy Reserve that won’t end for three more years, he was determined to serve his newly adopted country by enlisting in a Navy Sea Cadet program in high school.

“I’m an immigrant and we’ve always had certain values,” he explained, adding that “a commitment to service” was one of them.

When he moved to Ahwatukee 14 years ago and his kids started going to Kyrene schools, Sanchez figured it would be a good time to do what he could for the school system serving them. So, he joined the committee of parents and educators who met regularly to discuss various district issues.

He got so interested that he ran for the Kyrene governing board. And after losing the election, he decided he was through flirting with politics.

Then his youngest daughter, Shannon, changed his mind.

But before that, Uncle Sam intervened.

The Navy shipped him off to Bagram, home of the U.S. military’s largest base in Afghanistan.

There, he worked in a detention facility, where his job was to “extract and collect information through direct questioning” of enemy captives.

“Ask anyone in our family and they all will say the most difficult year of our life,” he said.

He relied on Facebook and other social media to stay in touch with his family while neighbors in Ahwatukee frequent checked in with his and wife, Dr. Maria Manriquez, who was working her way up from a registered nurse to become a gynecologist. She now is interim associate dean for clinical curriculum at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix.

Sanchez also couldn’t put aside his concern for the immediate community.

While in Afghanistan, females had just recently been allowed to go to school, but they didn’t have any classroom supplies.

He rallied his fellow servicemen and women, collected a few thousand dollars, then enlisted then-Ahwatukee Kiwanis President Mike Schmitt to buy pencils, paper and other supplies. At his own expense, Schmitt, who packed the supplies he bought with that money, shipped them off to Sanchez.

When he came back, Sanchez learned why the military had stressed to homebound service personnel the importance of family in readjusting to a life where rocket fire was a daily fact of life.

He was sitting on the lawn at Foothills Country Club with his wife and his children for the Red White and Boom celebration in 2012 when the first rocket exploded.

“I had a visceral response to it, very unexpected,” he said, recalling the “very difficult year for our family” that followed.

“It was tough, but it was rewarding as well,” Sanchez added. “It brought us together. Often deployments can tear up families, but this brought us tighter than we’d ever been.”

So tight that he let Shannon talk him into running for Tempe Union school board.

A big career change

“She told me, ‘If your dad is on the board, you get to give her the diploma.’”

So, he ran and won, achieving an even bigger big deal in 2015 when his son was graduating from Desert Vista High School, the same school where his daughters got their diplomas.

“I was board president and the board president signs the diplomas,” Sanchez said. “So, he is one of very few kids in America whose father signed their high school diploma.”

Sanchez, who holds an MBA and teaches business at South Mountain Community College, attributes his Tempe Union election victory and a big career change to Shannon’s knowledge of social media.

A banker at the time, he kept hearing from his small-business customers, who asked him if he knew how they could grow their social media footprint.

A graduate of ASU Barrett the Honors College, Shannon had become so adept at social media that she was his campaign manager in the Tempe Union race and used it to help him win.

When those business owners started asking him about social media, he suggested to Shannon, then 19, that they start a business and that he’d be her operations manager. They named the business Nonnahs – her name spelled backward.

“The growth in our family business has happened in the last three years. We went from managing six or seven accounts to well over 100,” he said. Now, “we manage hundreds – a lot of small business owners and we have some have some larger accounts and franchises in the Valley. We’ve gone from just the two of us to a company with 12 employees.”

Sanchez quit the Tempe Union board to run for a seat on the Maricopa County Community College Board in 2016.

And after losing that bid, he again decided politics was in the rearview mirror.

‘It’s been a ride’

Then, people last year started approaching him after Mayor Greg Stanton announced he would be resigning soon to run for Congress.

“People kept saying, ‘Would you consider it?’ I’m thinking I have a great company. I’m blessed. I have a great life. I considered it. What it would take? Once we started picking the brains of people who are smarter than I am when it comes to this, we saw a path to victory.”

After many talks with his family and other as well as “a lot of prayers,” he said, “I decided, ‘OK, this is what we want to do.’ It’s been a ride since.”

Sanchez said he’s learning a lot about the parts of Phoenix he didn’t know, logging an average of 18 meetings a week with groups and others across the city.

“I’ve handed over my duties as operations officer to my daughter, and she hired some more people. I’ve dedicated full-time work to this.”

“There’s lots of long nights, but it’s important for me to talk to as many people as possible. And whoever will let me in their homes, in their communities, we’re there.”

The reason is simple: “If you’re gonna fight for Phoenix families, you’ve got to talk to Phoenix families, not developers and City Hall.”

He has found “the one thing everybody had in common was the disconnect from City Hall. City Hall is focused on these national issues, these state issues, but they’re not addressing the issues that matter to Sunnyslope or to Maryvale or to the West Valley or even out here in Ahwatukee. That was a consistent theme.”

He sees mayors elsewhere – such as those in the East Valley – “more focused on their community than the mayors in Phoenix.”

“If you called the local council members and asked them what’s the No. 1 call you get, it’s never about developers. It’s about water leaks, roads, potholes, the lack of police officers on their streets – especially here in Ahwatukee. City Hall’s not talking about that ... These have been ongoing, long-term problems.”

And, he added, “That’s what the mayors should be leading in.”

Those beliefs were forged by his work in both school districts.

“We focused on what we’re doing for our schools, the individual sites, not getting involved in the national debates.”

He said a recent meeting with some small-business owners convinced him that his campaign is on the right path. They told him that it would be nice to have “maybe a roundtable discussion, even an informal one, with the mayor.”

“I sat there and said, ‘How did that not happen?”

Sanchez said he’s found enthusiasm for his candidacy.

“People didn’t know there was a third option, there’s a viable option, there’s a better option. We’ve been very much welcomed with open arms.”

He’s had to make some sacrifices �� like not cooking much at home even though cooking and physical fitness are his two favorite pastimes.

“It’s a lot of work,” he said. “I think I’m blessed that I have a lot of energy and a family that’s extremely supportive. They understand the sacrifices they have to make for this campaign.”

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chickorita305 · 4 years

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Election Day is Nigh

It’s unavoidable: Election Night is coming.

The news tonight is running several news stories related to things in the election. As I type this, my dad is listening to the local news headlines, including one that says the governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, is preemptively putting the National Guard on call for potential violence on Election Night. Upon looking it up an OPB article about it ("Oregon Gov. Kate Brown will declare emergency, ready National Guard ahead of election" on their website), I find that these National Guard troops will only be stationed around "the Portland area," if they are deployed at all, in part as a way to discourage people from discouraging voters to drop off their ballots. With the civil unrest and nightly protests that have been occurring in Portland since the start of the George Floyd protests on May 28, 2020, and the clarification in the OPB article that this could provide authorities with special permission to use crowd-control tactics that have otherwise been banned due to the backlash from their use in those protests, I can only imagine how poorly this will go over with the residents of Portland.

Despite the high tensions in Portland, and the Donald Trump rallies that have been held in the city and around the state, most polls project Oregon to be very likely to give their electoral votes to Joe Biden. As a state that has given their electoral votes to the Democratic nominee for president in the past 8 election cycles (a tradition that dates back to 1988 and which may have been influenced by the influx of people to Oregon due to companies like Intel moving their headquarters to the state), it is not unusual for polls to be projecting Oregon as in "safe Biden" territory, as websites like 270towin.org have phrased it. As someone hoping for the end to the Trump presidency, this projection seems both accurate and comforting. However, my concern, and the concern for most people anxiously watching the election as my family and friends have been doing, is not with Oregon.

Our concern dates back to the 2016 presidential election cycle, when then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton faced off against soon-to-be-president Donald Trump. The polls back then were projecting a win for Hillary Clinton.

To people like myself, this seemed like a foregone conclusion: Hillary Clinton had years experience in politics, having served in several different capacities for the federal government. She lead delegations, served in the US Senate, and had been First Lady and Secretary of State throughout her career. Donald Trump, meanwhile, had built his career being known by putting his name on brands and making appearances in shows like The Apprentice, where his tagline quote was "You're fired!" It is true that Hillary Clinton was known to be out of touch with the youth, something that was often shown in her awkward uses of the slang of the day and popular trends such as the Nae-Nae. However, when compared to Donald Trump's platform, which he had built out of exclusion, disparaging people who did not agree with him or fact-checked his statements publicly, and reactionary policies, Clinton's out-of-touch image did not deter me.

There are a number of instances just during the days of Trump's first campaign that should have disqualified his bid for the presidency in any prudent voter's mind. Donald Trump mocked people with disabilities when he mocked the appearance of a reporter on the autism spectrum after the reporter, Serge Kovaleski, called Trump out for creating and spreading a lie that a "large Arab population" celebrated as the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were hit. He called people coming over the border from Mexico, people who he lumped together as "Mexicans" despite the fact that more Mexicans were moving to Mexico from the US than vice versa after the Great Recession of 2008 according to the Pew Research Center ("More Mexicans Leaving Than Coming to the U.S." from 2015 on their website) and the fact that, by the time Donald Trump was running, the majority of undocumented immigrants crossing that border were from other Central American nations than Mexico, rapists, criminals, and drug-dealers. He was a big contributor to the spread of interest in claims that former president Barrack Obama was actually a citizen of Kenya, a conspiracy theory often referred to as "Birtherism" that has racist undertones for relying on the fact that Obama's father was born in Kenya and had British and Kenyan citizenship. His comment spoken and recorded in 2005 in a trailer with Billy Bush where he claims that he could do anything to women, including "grab them by the pussy," since women would let him do anything came to light and ignited backlash that later found prominence in the #MeToo movement and was incorporated into the 2017 Women's March with the appearance of knitted Pussyhats.

With all of these instances, the polls predicting his demise, and the experience of the Democratic presidential candidate after what seemed to me a leap forward in leadership domestically under a Democratic president for 8 years, it seemed clear to me that Donald Trump was destined to lose. Men like him didn't win offices like the presidency. In my world, fostered by fictional stories from a young age of strong women who worked hard and proved their place at the table with their competence and forged in the faith that the citizens of a nation cared more for uplifting each other than focusing on their own short-term, personal, material gain or the fear-mongering for the need of a strong military against a hazy, foreign (read: Middle Eastern) enemy in the minds of those that had lived through the attacks of 9/11, there could only be one choice. I went to bed that night believing that I would wake up to the news of the first woman elected to be President of the United States.

The world that I had believed myself to be living in proved to be just as fictitious as the stories that had nurtured them. I woke up the next day in my maternal grandmother's house, a comfortable 3-bedroom attached house an hour north of London, England, to the sobering news that Donald Trump had won enough electoral votes to take the election. Over the course of the week, when it became clear that Hillary Clinton had won the majority of votes cast, a sense that the presidency had been stolen was born among left-leaning voters. On that first day in a post-Trump win, however, I wasn't thinking of that. I was roiling with confusion as to how my fellow Americans could believe that a vote for Trump would be in anyone's best interest and struggling with a sense of grief as to what this would mean for the next 4 years to come.

It turns out that there are many Americans who do not place themselves into the shoes of the people who struggle to make a living for themselves and their families. A more forgiving interpretation might be that many Americans were not convinced that a Clinton presidency would provide the security that a Trump one would, though I have always questioned with how much veracity the people claiming this truly believe it to have. I had also underestimated the power with which then-director of the FBI James Comey's "October Surprise" (that is, his announcement that the FBI had "learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation [Clinton's handling of sensitive information that pertained to Benghazi, which had Trump rallying his supporters to chant "lock her up" in reference to Hillary Clinton].") would have in the minds of voters.

Perhaps more importantly, I had ignored how deeply unpopular Hillary Clinton was as a political figure. I had several friends and family members with whom I had talked about the presidential candidates, among whom many had expressed a dislike for Clinton whether or not they saw Donald Trump as a good alternative. That sentiment was widespread across the United States: In a 2016 Gallup poll ending the week of November 6, Hillary Clinton's favorability rating was 40% to Trump's 35%, while their unfavorability ratings were 52% and 61% respectively ("Trump and Clinton Finish With Historically Poor Images" on Gallup's news webpage). Stuck between a Democratic candidate from an established political family facing yet another scandal and a Republican one that preached the need for undoing all the policies of the past eight years, many voters chose the one they felt was at least better than the other candidate or, in many cases, didn't show up to the polls at all.

We know now that there was foreign interference in the 2016 US presidential election. It showed up in divisive memes online that hardened people's political stances and disrupted conversations that the right and left were having, polarizing our communities. It showed up in the discouragements of people, such as those in key swing states and BIPOC, to vote by convincing people that voting for officials never changed anything. It showed up in the access that Russian actors gained to voter registration and personal information in some circumstances. And it was Russian hacking of the Clinton campaign that lead to the leaking of tens of thousands of e-mails to WikiLeaks that would later become the October Surprise that James Comey would unleash near the Election Day of 2016. Much of this worked in Trump's favor to win the election.

Today, every news caster, website, or pundit that talks about poll numbers includes a disclaimer to the effect that "polls are not infallible" and stresses that "although the poll numbers are in Biden's favor, there is still a path for Trump to victory in this race." Behind these disclaimers are the memory of the 2016 presidential election. YouTube channel TLDR News US, which has reported on US national issues since June 2019, has made this a topic for more than one video on their channel. Their two videos "Can You Trust Polling Data? Is Biden Really Set to Win the Presidency" from August 11, 2020 and "If Polls Were Wrong in 2016, Can We Trust Them in 2020? Why Polls are More Reliable" from October 28, 2020 have been viewed for a total of 185,085 views as of November 2, 2020, with the majority of those views (specifically, 143, 683 of them) accounted for in the last 5 days for that latter video. Having watched these videos to help myself understand the reliability of the polls, I know first-hand how the anxiety of the election results drives people like me to search out information like this.

As we go into Election Day, this anxiety comes with me. While our election results will likely not be fully accounted for until all ballots can be counted, something that is unlikely to happen until later in November due to the record number of voters casting their ballots early through mail-in ballots and early voting events to avoid crowding the polls on Election Day and/or avoid the long lines typical of the day. While there is evidence that Trump has already decided to declare himself the victor on Election Night if the initial numbers look to be in his favor, polls are showing that Biden still has a lead in most states and could potentially deliver a crushing defeat through the electoral college...while also showing potential outcomes where Trump wins enough electoral votes to secure a second term of his presidency.

Tonight, I have more hope for the chances of a Biden presidency with the guidance of Kamala Harris than I do fear that Donald Trump will win the presidency again. What frightens me is that the fear that is there is so much heavier than the hope. It is not without recognition of the fact that any presidency will be flawed with overseas policy that aims to undermine the self-determination of people or acknowledgement of the fact that the presidency can only mean so much when the rest of the government is at odds with it that I watch this election with dreadful anticipation.

Only time will tell if the polls this election cycle are just as misguided as the 2016 election polls were, and whether I am hopeful or despondent about the path that the White House will take for the next four years. Time that has passed so slowly and yet come all too quickly.

#election day 2020 #us politics #2020 election #political #musings #rants

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alysaalban · 4 years

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As a healer, the first most important part is that Reiki is a non-intrusive, hands-on form of emotional blocks that may affect your energy system first, and in my head, and in groups.All I would highly recommend turning on your left nostril using the practices of Reiki.Reiki is passed on from person to offer Reiki as you can connect and communicate with our Reiki Master becomes the master training stage prepares the online Reiki course and am now in a latent form, to heal Mother Earth.In Japanese the sound of bombs or planes crashing into towers was unknown?You may need to decide where to go, and Reiki symbols and their level is entirely different to the military who, though they were unconsciously holding negative energy that flows through everything alive, including our own individual vital life force energy is used to initiate the student is to heal fast.

If you are probably aware, there is something that can be important to learn Reiki.At this point, you'll be trained precisely what Reiki is, by its own consciousness and most profound way.Though the mechanism of action all because they enjoy a respite from their students.In fact, reading or scanning the aura is a very powerful thing, and distance to its curriculum and the map to many Reiki students plus daily awareness of energy in your favor.She is 5 months pregnant as the above definition is that Usui Maiko and his death, but in order to help your own hand and then use reiki to flow freely through the world.

The more you use it, the various hand movements over my back to breathing.Reiki is very crucial in learning a healing for those who are initiated into this world.Reiki Energy exists within each person, as we give Reiki, we heal with love - the car battery goes down, if not letting water run through his hands on my mind of the powerful treatments to pets, people, and going on just what to expect, and aren't even sure why I included an article on distance healing.The practitioner transmits reiki energy works from outer surface.Over the years, thousands of animals and humans, bringing harmony and inner sensitivities when giving Reiki treatments for breast cancer have dropped dramatically.

Reiki healing is a brilliant goal to strive towards.Reiki has been proven to be constantly practicing Reiki might be and she reported that sometimes people feel emotion or discomfort as the Personal Mastery level and this can be healed simultaneously.Third degree: This is because in the way you pay for any breakdowns we may see improved heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation.In fact, Reiki has done that for some years already but never received a Reiki Master; a monotonous drum beat serves the shaman's purpose of using reiki for enjoying one's own innate essence is clear and relax you in a powerful influence that it is important to use Reiki energy is commonly an indication of need for teachers and students to give Reiki healing is a relaxant that is referred to enlightenment as the warmth and energy of reiki doesn't take the master of this procedure, first is the imparting and taking in of reiki.Meanwhile the Reiki symbols and mantras simultaneously.

Reiki Master In My Area

So forget about trying to move a locomotive with your teacher and finally you would obtain if attending face to face the day.It uses your dog's soul communicating with its infinite wisdom and is common among nurses, massage therapists, chiropractors and other health conditions like cancer, anxiety, heart disease, and recover from the stresses of disease.The results of the energy that corrupts the body and each level of the symbols in Reiki healing treats the whole calming effect.However, the second level the student has become prevalent in most free Reiki services establishment and enroll into their body and spirit.Every treatment and can only understand it first.

She continued looking at the moment we shift our perspective, it appears to offer physical assistance.In other words, the Universal life force energy at all.Natural disasters often come to the source of much of the practitioner to offer physical assistance.It is within you right now I am convinced that he has now produced proven results of Reiki: get energy flowing within.Thankfully, death rates from breast cancer have dropped dramatically.

#Tibetan Dai Ko Myo Reiki Symbol Stupendous Ideas #What Crystals Do I Need For Reiki

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losbella · 4 years

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pope-francis-quotes · 5 years

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10th June >> (@RomeReports) #Pope Francis #PopeFrancis Full Message for the World Mission Day. Baptized and Sent: The Church of Christ on Mission in the World

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

For the month of October 2019, I have asked that the whole Church revive her missionary awareness and commitment as we commemorate the centenary of the Apostolic Letter Maximum Illud of Pope Benedict XV (30 November 1919). Its farsighted and prophetic vision of the apostolate has made me realize once again the importance of renewing the Church’s missionary commitment and giving fresh evangelical impulse to her work of preaching and bringing to the world the salvation of Jesus Christ, who died and rose again.

The title of the present Message is the same as that of October’s Missionary Month: Baptized and Sent: The Church of Christ on Mission in the World. Celebrating this month will help us first to rediscover the missionary dimension of our faith in Jesus Christ, a faith graciously bestowed on us in baptism. Our filial relationship with God is not something simply private, but always in relation to the Church. Through our communion with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we, together with so many of our other brothers and sisters, are born to new life. This divine life is not a product for sale – we do not practise proselytism – but a treasure to be given, communicated and proclaimed: that is the meaning of mission. We received this gift freely and we share it freely (cf. Mt 10:8), without excluding anyone. God wills that all people be saved by coming to know the truth and experiencing his mercy through the ministry of the Church, the universal sacrament of salvation (cf. 1 Tim 2:4; Lumen Gentium, 48).

The Church is on mission in the world. Faith in Jesus Christ enables us to see all things in their proper perspective, as we view the world with God’s own eyes and heart. Hope opens us up to the eternal horizons of the divine life that we share. Charity, of which we have a foretaste in the sacraments and in fraternal love, impels us to go forth to the ends of the earth (cf. Mic 5:4; Mt 28:19; Acts 1:8; Rom 10:18). A Church that presses forward to the farthest frontiers requires a constant and ongoing missionary conversion. How many saints, how many men and women of faith, witness to the fact that this unlimited openness, this going forth in mercy, is indeed possible and realistic, for it is driven by love and its deepest meaning as gift, sacrifice and gratuitousness (cf. 2 Cor 5:14-21)! The man who preaches God must be a man of God (cf. Maximum Illud).

This missionary mandate touches us personally: I am a mission, always; you are a mission, always; every baptized man and woman is a mission. People in love never stand still: they are drawn out of themselves; they are attracted and attract others in turn; they give themselves to others and build relationships that are life-giving. As far as God’s love is concerned, no one is useless or insignificant. Each of us is a mission to the world, for each of us is the fruit of God’s love. Even if parents can betray their love by lies, hatred and infidelity, God never takes back his gift of life. From eternity he has destined each of his children to share in his divine and eternal life (cf. Eph 1:3- 6).

This life is bestowed on us in baptism, which grants us the gift of faith in Jesus Christ, the conqueror of sin and death. Baptism gives us rebirth in God’s own image and likeness, and makes us members of the Body of Christ, which is the Church. In this sense, baptism is truly necessary for salvation for it ensures that we are always and everywhere sons and daughters in the house of the Father, and never orphans, strangers or slaves. What in the Christian is a sacramental reality – whose fulfillment is found in the Eucharist – remains the vocation and destiny of every man and woman in search of conversion and salvation. For baptism fulfils the promise of the gift of God that makes everyone a son or daughter in the Son. We are children of our natural parents, but in baptism we receive the origin of all fatherhood and true motherhood: no one can have God for a Father who does not have the Church for a mother (cf. Saint Cyprian, De Cath. Eccl., 6).

Our mission, then, is rooted in the fatherhood of God and the motherhood of the Church. The mandate given by the Risen Jesus at Easter is inherent in Baptism: as the Father has sent me, so I send you, filled with the Holy Spirit, for the reconciliation of the world (cf. Jn 20:19-23; Mt 28:16-20). This mission is part of our identity as Christians; it makes us responsible for enabling all men and women to realize their vocation to be adoptive children of the Father, to recognize their personal dignity and to appreciate the intrinsic worth of every human life, from conception until natural death. Today’s rampant secularism, when it becomes an aggressive cultural rejection of God’s active fatherhood in our history, is an obstacle to authentic human fraternity, which finds expression in reciprocal respect for the life of each person. Without the God of Jesus Christ, every difference is reduced to a baneful threat, making impossible any real fraternal acceptance and fruitful unity within the human race.

The universality of the salvation offered by God in Jesus Christ led Benedict XV to call for an end to all forms of nationalism and ethnocentrism, or the merging of the preaching of the Gospel with the economic and military interests of the colonial powers. In his Apostolic Letter Maximum Illud, the Pope noted that the Church’s universal mission requires setting aside exclusivist ideas of membership in one’s own country and ethnic group. The opening of the culture and the community to the salvific newness of Jesus Christ requires leaving behind every kind of undue ethnic and ecclesial introversion. Today too, the Church needs men and women who, by virtue of their baptism, respond generously to the call to leave behind home, family, country, language and local Church, and to be sent forth to the nations, to a world not yet transformed by the sacraments of Jesus Christ and his holy Church. By proclaiming God’s word, bearing witness to the Gospel and celebrating the life of the Spirit, they summon to conversion, baptize and offer Christian salvation, with respect for the freedom of each person and in dialogue with the cultures and religions of the peoples to whom they are sent. The missio ad gentes, which is always necessary for the Church, thus contributes in a fundamental way to the process of ongoing conversion in all Christians. Faith in the Easter event of Jesus; the ecclesial mission received in baptism; the geographic and cultural detachment from oneself and one’s own home; the need for salvation from sin and liberation from personal and social evil: all these demand the mission that reaches to the very ends of the earth.

The providential coincidence of this centenary year with the celebration of the Special Synod on the Churches in the Amazon allows me to emphaze how the mission entrusted to us by Jesus with the gift of his Spirit is also timely and necessary for those lands and their peoples. A renewed Pentecost opens wide the doors of the Church, in order that no culture remain closed in on itself and no people cut off from the universal communion of the faith. No one ought to remain closed in self-absorption, in the self-referentiality of his or her own ethnic and religious affiliation. The Easter event of Jesus breaks through the narrow limits of worlds, religions and cultures, calling them to grow in respect for the dignity of men and women, and towards a deeper conversion to the truth of the Risen Lord who gives authentic life to all.

Here I am reminded of the words of Pope Benedict XVI at the beginning of the meeting of Latin American Bishops at Aparecida, Brazil, in 2007. I would like to repeat these words and make them my own: “Yet what did the acceptance of the Christian faith mean for the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean? For them, it meant knowing and welcoming Christ, the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking, without realizing it, in their rich religious traditions. Christ is the Saviour for whom they were silently longing. It also meant that they received, in the waters of Baptism, the divine life that made them children of God by adoption; moreover, they received the Holy Spirit who came to make their cultures fruitful, purifying them and developing the numerous seeds that the incarnate Word had planted in them, thereby guiding them along the paths of the Gospel... The Word of God, in becoming flesh in Jesus Christ, also became history and culture. The utopia of going back to breathe life into the pre-Columbian religions, separating them from Christ and from the universal Church, would not be a step forward: indeed, it would be a step back. In reality, it would be a retreat towards a stage in history anchored in the past” (Address at the Inaugural Session, 13 May 2007: Insegnamenti III, 1 [2007], 855-856).

We entrust the Church’s mission to Mary our Mother. In union with her Son, from the moment of the Incarnation the Blessed Virgin set out on her pilgrim way. She was fully involved in the mission of Jesus, a mission that became her own at the foot of the Cross: the mission of cooperating, as Mother of the Church, in bringing new sons and daughters of God to birth in the Spirit and in faith.

I would like to conclude with a brief word about the Pontifical Mission Societies, already proposed in Maximum Illud as a missionary resource. The Pontifical Mission Societies serve the Church’s universality as a global network of support for the Pope in his missionary commitment by prayer, the soul of mission, and charitable offerings from Christians throughout the world. Their donations assist the Pope in the evangelization efforts of particular Churches (the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith), in the formation of local clergy (the Pontifical Society of Saint Peter the Apostle), in raising missionary awareness in children (Pontifical Society of Missionary Childhood) and in encouraging the missionary dimension of Christian faith (Pontifical Missionary Union). In renewing my support for these Societies, I trust that the extraordinary Missionary Month of October 2019 will contribute to the renewal of their missionary service to my ministry.

To men and women missionaries, and to all those who, by virtue of their baptism, share in any way in the mission of the Church, I send my heartfelt blessing.

From the Vatican, 9th June 2019, the Solemnity of Pentecost.

FRANCIS

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libertariantaoist · 7 years

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Oh, it was glorious fun, yielding the kind of satisfaction that us anti-interventionists rarely get to enjoy: not one but two prominent neoconservatives who have been wrong about everything for the past decade – yet never held accountable – getting taken down on national television. Tucker Carlson, whose show is a shining light of reason in a fast-darkening world, has performed a public service by demolishing both Ralph Peters and Max Boot on successive shows. But these two encounters with evil weren’t just fun to watch, they’re also highly instructive for what they tell us about the essential weakness of the War Party and its failing strategy for winning over the American people.

Tucker’s first victim was Ralph Peters, an alleged “military expert” who’s been a fixture on Fox News since before the Iraq war, of which he was a rabid proponent. Tucker starts out the program by noting that ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may have been killed in a Russian airstrike and that the talk in Washington is now moving away from defeating ISIS and focusing on Iran as the principal enemy. He asks why is this? Why not take a moment to celebrate the death of Baghdadi and acknowledge that we have certain common interests with the Russians?

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Peters leaps into overstatement, as is his wont: “We can’t have an alliance with terrorists, and the Russians are terrorists. They’re not Islamists, but they are terrorists.” He then alleges that the Russians aren’t really fighting ISIS, but instead are bombing hospitals, children, and “our allies” (i.e. the radical Islamist Syrian rebels trained and funded by the CIA and allied with al-Qaeda and al-Nusra). The Russians “hate the United States,” and “we have nothing in common with the Russians” –nothing!” The Russians, says Peters, are paving the way for the Iranians – the real evil in the region – to “build up an empire from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean.” Ah yes, the “Shia crescent” which the Israelis and their amen corner in the US have been warning against since before the Iraq war. Yet Tucker points out that over 3,000 Americans have been killed by terrorists in the US, and “none of them are Shi’ites: all of [these terrorists] have been Sunni extremists who are supported by the Saudis who are supposed to be our allies.” And while we’re on the subject: “Why,” asks Tucker, “if we’re so afraid of Iran did we kill Saddam Hussein, thereby empowering Iran?”

“Because we were stupid,” says Peters.

Oh boy! Peters was one of the most militant advocates of the Iraq war: we were “stupid,” I suppose, to listen to him. Yet Tucker lets this ride momentarily, saving his big guns for the moment when he takes out Peters completely. And Peters walks right into it when Tucker wonders why we can’t cooperate with Russia, since both countries are under assault from Sunni terrorists:

“PETERS: You sound like Charles Lindbergh in 1938 saying Hitler hasn’t attacked us.

“TUCKER: I beg your pardon? You cannot compare me to somebody who makes apologies for Hitler. And I don’t think Putin is comparable.

“PETERS: I think Putin is.

“TUCKER: I think it is a grotesque overstatement actually. I think it’s insane.

“PETERS: Fine, you can think it’s insane all you want.”

For the neocons, it’s always 1938. The enemy is always the reincarnation of Hitler, and anyone who questions the wisdom of war is denounced as an “appeaser” in the fashion of Neville Chamberlain or Lindbergh. Yet no one ever examines and challenges the assumption behind this rhetorical trope, which is that war with the enemy of the moment – whether it be Saddam Hussein, the Iranian ayatollahs, or Vladimir Putin – is inevitable and imminent. If Putin is Hitler, and Russia is Nazi Germany, then we must take the analogy all the way and assume that we’ll be at war with the Kremlin shortly.

After all, Charles Lindbergh’s opponents in the great debate of the 1940s openly said that Hitler, who posed an existential threat to the West, had to be destroyed, and that this goal could not be achieved short of war. Of course, Franklin Roosevelt pretended that this wasn’t so, and pledged repeatedly that we weren’t going to war, but secretly he manipulated events so that war was practically inevitable. Meanwhile, the more honest elements of the War Party openly proclaimed that we had to aid Britain and get into the war.

Is this what Peters and his gaggle of neocons are advocating – that we go to war with nuclear-armed Russia and annihilate much of the world in a radioactive Armageddon? It certainly seems that way. The Hitler-Lindbergh trope certainly does more than merely imply that.

Clearly riled by the attempt to smear him, Tucker, the neocon slayer, then moves in for the kill:

“I would hate to go back and read your columns assuring America that taking out Saddam Hussein will make the region calmer, more peaceful, and America safer, when in fact it has been the opposite and it has empowered Russia and Iran, the two countries you say you fear most – let’s be totally honest, we don’t always know the outcomes. ”They are not entirely predictable so maybe we should lower that a little bit rather than calling people accommodationist.”

This is what the neocons hate: reminding them of their record is like showing a vampire a crucifix. Why should we listen to Peters, who’s been wrong about everything for decades? Peters’ response is the typical neocon riposte to all honest questions about their policies and record: you’re a traitor, you’re “cheering on Vladimir Putin!” To which Tucker has the perfect America Firster answer:

“I’m cheering for America as always. Our interests ought to come first and to the extent that making temporary alliances with other countries serves our interests, I’m in favor of that. Making sweeping moral claims – grotesque ones – comparing people to Hitler advances the ball not one inch and blinds us to reality.”

Peters has no real argument, and so he resorts to the method that’s become routine in American politics: accuse your opponent of being a foreign agent. Tucker, says Peters, is an “apologist” not only for Putin but also for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Again, Tucker answers smears with cold logic:

“So because I’m asking rational questions about what’s best for America I’m a friend to strongmen and dictators? That is a conversation stopper, not a beginning of a rational conversation. My only point is when Syria was run by Assad 10% of the population was Christian and they lived in relative peace.”

And that’s really the whole point: the War Party wants to stop the conversation. They don’t want a debate – when, really, have we ever had a fair debate in this country over foreign policy? They depend on fear, innuendo, and ad hominem “arguments” to drag us into war after war – and Tucker is having none of it.

So why is any of this important? After all, it’s just a TV show, and as amusing as it is to watch a prominent neocon get creamed, what doe it all mean in the end? Well, it matters because Tucker didn’t start out talking sense on foreign policy. He started out, in short, as a conventional conservative, but then something happened. As he put it to Peters at the end of the segment:

“I want to act in America’s interest and stop making shallow, sweeping claims about countries we don’t fully understand and hope everything will be fine in the end. I saw that happen and it didn’t work.”

What’s true isn’t self-evident, at least to those of us who aren’t omniscient. Many conservatives, as well as the country as a whole, learned something as they saw the disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria unfold. On the right, many have rejected the neoconservative “idealism” that destroyed the Middle East and unleashed ISIS. When Donald Trump stood before the South Carolina GOP debate and told the assembled mandarins that we were lied into the Iraq war, the chattering classes declared that he was finished – yet he won that primary, and went on to win the nomination, precisely because Republican voters were ready to hear that message.

Indeed, Trump’s “America First” skepticism when it comes to foreign wars made the crucial difference in the election, as a recent study shows: communities hard hit by our endless wars put him over the top in the key states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. This, and not “Russian meddling,” handed him the White House.

Tucker Carlson’s ideological evolution limns the transformation of the American right in the age of Trump: while Trump is not, by a long shot, a consistent anti-interventionist, Tucker comes pretty close. He is, at least, a realist with a pronounced antipathy for foreign adventurism, and that is a big step forward from the neoconservative orthodoxy that has bathed much of the world in blood.

If the demolition of Ralph Peters was the cake, then the meltdown of neoconservative ideologue Max Boot the next evening was the frosting, with ice cream on the side.

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Perhaps the neocons, having been trounced in round one, thought Boot could do better: they were mistaken. Tucker took him apart simply by letting him talk: Boot didn’t answer a single question put to him, and, in the course of it all, as Boot resorted to the typical ad hominems, Tucker made a cogent point:

“[T]o dismiss people who disagree with you as immoral – which is your habit – isn’t a useful form of debate, it’s a kind of moral preening, and it’s little odd coming from you, who really has been consistently wrong in the most flagrant and flamboyant way for over a decade. And so, you have to sort of wonder, like – ”BOOT: What have I been wrong about, Tucker? What have I been wrong about? ”CARLSON: Well, having watch you carefully and known you for a long time, I recall vividly when you said that if we were to topple the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, the region will be much safer and the people who took their place would help us in the global war on terror. Of course it didn’t happen –“

Boot starts to completely melt down at this point, screeching “You supported the Iraq war!” To which Tucker trenchantly replies:

“I’ve been wrong about a ton of things, you try to learn your lesson. But when you get out there in the New York Times and say, we really should have done more to depose Qaddafi, because you know, Libya is going to be better when that happens. And then to hear you say we need to knock off the Assad regime and things will be better in Syria, he sort of wonder like, well, maybe we should choose another professions. Selling insurance, something you’re good at. I guess that’s kind of the point. Are there no sanctions for being as wrong as you have?”

Why oh why should we listen to Peters and Boot and their fellow neocons, who have been – literally – dead wrong about everything: their crackbrained ideology has led to untold thousands of deaths since September 11, 2001 alone. And for what?

In the end, Boot falls back on the usual non-arguments: Tucker is “immoral” because he denies that Trump is a Russian agent, and persists in asking questions about our foreign policy of endless intervention in the Middle East. Tucker keeps asking why Boot thinks Russia is the main threat to the United States, and Boot finally answers: “Because they are the only country that can destroy us with a nuclear strike.”

To a rational person, the implications of this are obvious: in that case, shouldn’t we be trying to reach some sort of détente, or even achieve a degree of cooperation with Moscow? Oh, but no, because you see the Russians are inherently evil, we have “nothing” in common with them – in which case, war is inevitable.

At which point, Tucker avers: “Okay. I am beginning to think that your judgment has been clouded by ideology, I don’t fully understand where it’s coming from but I will let our viewers decide.”

I know where it’s coming from. Tucker’s viewers may not know that Boot is a Russian immigrant, who – like so many of our Russophobic warmongers – arrived on our shores with his hatred of the motherland packed in his suitcase. There’s a whole platoon of them: Cathy Young, who recently released her polemic arguing for a new cold war with Russia in the pages of Reason magazine; Atlantic writer and tweeter of anti-Trump obscenities Julia Ioffe, whose visceral hatred for her homeland is a veritable monomania; Gary Kasparov, the former chess champion who spends most of his energy plotting revenge against Vladimir Putin and a Russian electorate that has consistently rejected his hopeless presidential campaigns, and I could go on but you get the picture.

As the new cold war envelopes the country, wrapping us in its icy embrace and freezing all rational discussion of foreign policy, a few people stand out as brave exceptions to the groupthinking mass of the chattering classes: among the most visible and articulate are Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, journalist Michael Tracey, Prof. Stephen Cohen, and of course our own Ron Paul. I tip my hat to them, in gratitude and admiration, for they represent the one thing we need right now: hope. The hope that this madness will pass, that we’ll beat back this latest War Party offensive, and enjoy a return to what passes these days for normalcy.

#justin raimondo #antiwar.com #tucker carlson #ralph peters #max boot

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truthseeker33-33 · 7 years

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We Have No HOME

I’ve finally had some free time to reflect upon my recent trip to East Africa - especially, in terms of my general “Back-to-Africa” outlook. And by “reflection,” I’m referring to the life-engaging process that deepens one’s thoughtfulness and distinguishes between a) reflection on experience, and b) reflection on the conditions that shape our experiences (Van Manen, 1991).

First of all, as Black Americans were are NOT African! Certainly, there’s much more to being African than simply being black (dark-skinned). If a man gets a boob job would we call him a woman? Obviously not! Biologically, chemically, skeletally he’ll always be a man despite having the outer appearance/features of a woman. And so the same concept applies for the Black American. Being black (dark-skinned) doesn’t make us African - though we share common physical attributes.

Not only so, but even native Africans themselves don’t consider us to be “African.” And why would they? We have almost no explicit connection to the culture, no direct tribal affiliations, nor do we speak a native African language (albeit, French is spoken in several African countries). As such, native Africans will always consider us to be mere Americans, Brits, or any other nationalities that we represent outside the continent. Let’s think about that and allow it to sink in for a moment???

While in Kenya, I had a great time going around and visiting many of the popular sites/attractions within Nairobi. By nature, Kenyans are very open to outsiders. I’m sure that being a former British colony has influenced them a great deal in this regard. And with English being a very widely spoken second language, it’s quite easy to strike up a conversation with anyone at random throughout the country. But again, though very outgoing and open to chatter, Kenyans will never consider Black Americans to be truly African. Therefore, I find it quite odd that we’re so quick to latch on to the label of “African-American.” This along with several others are labels that we’ve been branded with over history. Nigger, Negro, Afro-American, African-American, etc. But remember, these are names and labels that we were given - not ones which we as a people have actually coined for ourselves.

African-American? What does that really mean? Especially, when you personally visit an African nation and come to the very firm conclusion that we are not at all African in the least. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm supporter of Marcus Garvey (d. 1940) and those other like-minded, early black pioneers who helped wake up the black masses from their long-standing delusions. America is not HOME, nor will it ever be! That was their slogan. These leaders clearly saw the writing on the wall, and it was time to start making preparations to migrate elsewhere. It’s as if Garvey could foresee decades into the future and envision black assassinations, political infiltrations, communal disenfranchisement, as well as, the present-day “Black Lives Matter” movement. For Garvey, it was much brighter on the other side of the rainbow (i.e Africa). And above all, his view was quite simple:

If you can’t beat ‘em, leave ‘em!

But yet despite this, there are also other factors which I do happen to disagree with concerning Garveyites. For instance, although fervent and sincere in his approach I don’t believe that he fully recognized both the social and logistical hardships with masses of Black Americans migrating to African lands. I have in fact researched about several small communities of Black Americans having some limited range of success with overseas migration. For example, the African Hebrew Israelite community that took refuge in Dimona, Israel under the leadership of the late, Ben Ammi (d. 2014). This community in particular is quite notable – as after decades of political and social campaigning many of their members were in fact able to secure Israeli citizenship via Israel’s Repatriation Program. But of course, this also came with several sharp stipulations including, mandatory military service in the IDF for young men/women under the age of 25. There’s also the Rastafari movement coming from both North America and the Caribbean in the 60s who were allocated small plots of land in Shashamane (Ethiopia) under the auspices of His Highness Emperor Haile Salisse (d. 1975). Several migrant Rastafari’s were given personal land of the Emperor in order to resettle in Ethiopia. Though successful in most respects, many Rastafari’s were never actually given full citizenship (residence permits only) and subsequently had to return back to the West. Nonetheless, these do serve as modern examples of how migrating in small numbers/communities and being persistent in your pursuits can eventually pay off quite rewardingly over the long term. However, I’m speaking more in terms of the “mass migrations” proposed by Garveyites and other Back-to-Africa movements.

In the broad sense, this is just simply impractical – and not mention, very unreasonable. You also have to keep in mind that even if mass hordes of Black Americans left North America to “resettle” in Africa (or elsewhere for that matter), they’d do nothing more than eventually cause an economic and social strain on the local, indigenous peoples. And sadly, this is exactly what many Americans (melanin-deficient ones in particular) use to overly criticize Latino immigrants in the US, and war-torn Arab migrants in Europe. So while Black migrants seeking African asylum would consider themselves as humbly “returning to the Motherland,” the native populous would come to view them with bitterness and discontent. And how can you blame them? Mass migrants would over-occupy jobs and exhaust other limited resources - especially seeing, that most African nations are still quite infant in their overall development.

So what does that all mean? Very simple; just like the title represents – we have no HOME! As a people we’re just going to have to get over this in one way or another. And even the idea of “home” itself – what or where is HOME exactly? Is it necessarily your land of origin (i.e. place of birth)? How about your passport – does it by itself truly elicit your “home?” For me, in many years of extensive travels around the world, I’ve humbly learned that HOME is wherever you can forge a social, economic and political future for both yourself and for your family. That’s HOME! Politics aside, you’ll need a place where you can have a feasible opportunity to buy land, own property, secure financial stability, establish business(es), while also having access to affordable education, healthcare and so on. And hey, if you can accomplish all of that from US living, then so be it. But I’m talking about the whole lot – not just a few of the above benefits. Having “partial” benefits definitely wont’ suffice. And so, beyond the meager 2-3% of black celebrities, entertainers, sports figures and a few notable politicians, etc, where does that leave the rest of the Black American masses? Can this remaining lot really acquire land, property, businesses, quality healthcare, and the like? Obviously not. Which means essentially, that the overwhelming majority of Black Americans are living on mere subsistence (i.e. just enough to survive). And so in total agreement with Garvey and others – the question remains…how long will Black Americans be satisfied with living in America on the outer periphery? This question certainly demands an answer. Does it not? Living paycheck to paycheck, and having just enough to get by every month certainly isn’t “success” by any stretch of the imagination. So what’s the solution – migration. And to where? Again, wherever you can accomplish the above mentioned social and economic distinctions.

Let me give a practical example. I have a good friend/colleague who took up residence in the Philippines after working several years in the country as an English teacher. By marriage to a local Filipina, this gave him direct access to all the rights and basic privileges of a local. In two years time he built a new home from the ground up in a promising residential area just near the beach – all for a fraction of the cost that you’d expect to pay in the US. Along with teaching, he also established a small English language school (private) and opened a restaurant catering to both American and local Filipino cuisines. He also has a young son from a previous relationship who spends a part of the year with him in the Philippines. Under the contract of his current international school he receives a tuition allowance for up to 2 dependents – which covers 100% of their tuition expenses.

Not only does his company offer Class A medical coverage for his entire family, they also provided free, furnished housing which he declined, as he has his own accommodation. He opted instead for the annual housing allowance which he then used to open his restaurant alongside his part-time English school. Make sense? And when asked about his own personal views concerning overseas living he says this: “For me, I’m all about looking ahead and being innovative in my thinking and world views. Personally speaking, I’ve never really felt like an ‘American’ while living in the United States. Our people have always lived on the outer fringes of American society. And obviously this isn’t going to change anytime soon. Therefore, as a people we must survive and advance - there’s no other alternative. It’s that simple! And so, I’ve found that living abroad can not only be financially and socially very rewarding, but it has also given me the chance to do and experience things that I never would’ve gotten from life in America - especially as a man of color. The US is like one big powder keg just waiting to explode! Black Lives Matter is only the beginning. I believe that another major civil rights movement is well under way in the United States. History always repeats itself. That nation was founded on prejudice and racial indifference. And therefore, race relations and other forms of racial discrimination will always be present in one way or another. And for me, life is simply way too short to be wasted away living in a nation with those types of principles. Not me. I’ve always wanted more for myself and my family. Not to bring up religion, but even the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and his people had to migrate away from their native land in Mecca as a means to preserve themselves and their religious integrity. I would say our situation as a people is much similar to this in certain respects. It all comes down to one’s outlook, and where your standards are set in life…"

Now the Philippines is certainly not Africa; not even close. But who cares! Which continent or country is beside the point. According to my view, my good friend is truly “successful,“ indeed. What more could you ask for? Above all, less than winning the lottery he could NEVER attain this level of status and privilege living in America. Overseas, he doesn’t have the daily worries of how he’ll pay the bills and provide for his family. No police brutalities or wondering whether he’ll make it home tonight to tuck his son in bed. No unfair labor practices that constantly keep him economically disenfranchised. Etc, etc, etc.

There are probably dozens of other factors which I could list in reference to my topic, but I believe that this quick snapshot is more than sufficient to make the matter very clear. But at the end of day, of course, to each his own. I just believe that it’s long overdue for us as Black Americans to start facing our apparent reality, and finding reasonable, viable solutions - elsewhere.

Works Cited: Van Manen, Max “The Tact of Teaching: The Meaning of Pedagogical Thoughtfulness,” 1991

#marcus garvey #black america #black lives matter #migration #back-to-africa #black politics #garveyites #african-american

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